Thursday, September 5, 2019

Beautiful Sunshine

My posture they say is like Cagney’s in White Heat,
and I have a tendency to explain it all like Edward G
Robinson, or any schmuck from New York, smooth, fast
as a missed deadline; someone even thinks I look like
Clint, when he squints to cut the glare of Tuscany’s sun,
hand on his gun, working a cigar between the hinges

of his mouth. It’s easy to imagine one’s life hinges
on how pretty you are, how you carry yourself in the heat
of one's complexes: like a dumb moth to the sun
no bigger than a nitelite. If I enter the bank in my G-
string homewear, will security  reach for his pistol like
you see cops do when they get an inkling things are fast

coming undone? Will she, at the teller window, a fast
and happy counter of coin, refuse to serve me? It hinges
on how I bear myself, since my finger like
an appendage of nose would be uncouth, even in the heat
of my living room, and especially were I wearing a G-
Man's holster at my heart, gun at my nipple, the sun

shining where the sun was meant to shine, a new sun
to fire up the inner life of molecules, so small, so fast
you can’t see them at night. I viewed their ugliness; Gee,
I said, you mean we’re nothing but these hinges
swinging in time on the lovely gooeyness in heat?
They squiggled, thoughtless, fevered snot-like

in their puddle. Doors unhinged become roofs like
toads in the garden crawl under to escape the sun
our learned claim will create the kind of lethal heat
that all life is threatened, and we'll have to act fast
if we want to breathe like our forebears did. So much hinges
on our definition of beautiful: how many strands of ge-

nomes have met their demise? Some say, adapt: G
is for Garden; new technology! It will save us! Like
help us survive. I love tooling that manufactures hinges
so perfect, you know, they make no sound. Let the sun
do what it does! Some say, "nature doesn't work fast,
there's time to think of a cooler word than “heat."

If the heat gets out of hand, as dizzying as the G-
force of a rolling jet, we'll just have to fast a lot, like
not eat. It all hinges on us; let's not blame a blinding sun.