Remember when the sidewalk felt like Hell
When everything would melt as fast as ice
If cold is whispered, heat must be a yell
Of words when eating jalapeño spice
The heat of words that linger past their sound
Like sweat that lingers long on reddened skin
Or wilted plants collapsed on sun-baked ground
Of earth that’s baked too hard to let them in
Can similes evaporate in verse
In heated lines of poetry we read
And no, don’t say: “You know, it could be worse . . .”
What’s worse is never something sane folk need
My sanity is sapped by summer’s heat
Where poems droop in rhymes that just repeat.