Summer

 

Here's a secret:

summer isn't real. 

It's a replica cooked up in an industrial oven somewhere.

Want to know 

how I know

how I know 

want to know?

hmm hmm hmm?

Sugar, I could enlighten you about a few things,

lay out the deets like an Alexa  but with way better hair.

You see, the real summer, 

the one we grew up in like 

wogs in a puddle with our

bikes and Kool-Aid and

sense of endless warm nose-in-the-green-grass days ahead,

she's gone, my dude. 

They have her secured at Gitmo or Bethesda or somewhere,

trying to find out HOW, like HOW, summer? Give it up already!

She's a clam, she tells them to fuck right off, so there she stays.

This new summer, the one we're in now

like koi fish swimming around saying looky,

our orbit is decaying, mayday mayday!

water temp rising, abandon ship!

is

not

real.

This cheap knock-off, this ersatz season, is as fake as an Eligible Bachelor

with a certificate of authenticity laminated and embossed

with a realistic official seal sticking out of his man purse. I mean

gimme a break.

You don't know me and shit, I get that.

I could just be somebody off their meds

or trolling you because because because...

because that's the wonderful thing she does!

So here is 

one

true

sentence,

and it is the truest sentence that I know:

I long for Fall, because Fall knows me, keeps the windows

yellow-lit and has my long sweater ready, laundered

and scented, laid out next to my cute sox and funky newsboy cap;

Fall wants me, lets me know that I am a work of art and a woman

in the right flesh at the right time to carry the right soul  and a mug

of hot mocha straight into an October morning and live there.

Now imma cry and bake in the phony replacement sun

and maybe if you're any kind of friend you'll say shh shh

baby and tell me softly

in my ear

about leaves

and frost

and hope

and all that happy hopscotch,

ok?

Hang a while with me 

and be my balm in Gilead, 

 my Saint Anthony to the lost.

___________

For Word Garden Word List--Whisper Down the Lane. 

I kind of lifted my man Ernest's words for that one part. No wait, it's an homage!

Music: Fontella Bass Rescue Me