The Harmful Hazards of Heat

I wrote a poem inspired by the current heatwave…

The why, the what, the wanton way Pietro trained Tracey! 

She—pale, wispy, wayward, lost along the sunbeaten path. 

Her limping gait raises Blitzkrieg sheets of bleached fine-grained sand.

Pietro drives her advancing passage 

Into scenic Death Valley dehydration

Without mercy or thought.

The brain boils at a terminal point.

Wavy hallucinations before the fall.

It is not a mirage.

The tongue turns to jerky.

The cactuses laugh like loaded showgoers. 

Proceed advance continue progress… 

Go forth.

Until the eyes are dried blind

And swallowing becomes impossible.

Pietro takes contented sips

And swims like a fish

Beneath an arctic ice floe.

Tracey undulated and displayed her mammillae

To friendless men made rowdy by beer 

And her tawdry flashing gyrating affectations.

Writhing wriggling waggling wiggling

Around a tinsel-colored pole 

Across an elevated stage 

Raising paper gravy

One tickling tuck at a time.

Now Tracey’s encumbered trudges become numb.

She ceased sweating ages ago.

She whirls, she sinks, she forgets what she is.

Collapsing in the arid suffocating sand.

The ardent dark enfolds.

Her grandmother soothes,

“Welcome, my dear. Can I get you something to drink?”  

Pietro turns back 

And returns to alabaster bones.