Variations On A Summer Day

I.
clouds travel across their
cobalt blue fortress at a gluttonous pace,
as if they have just finished a
particularly large and succulent meal of
rice pudding and chicken pot pie

II.
what was just my car is now a
high-security asylum for a schizophrenic moth
riddled with half-hearted hallucinations
of giants in its prison

III.
the heat is dense, oppressive,
a stifling yet penetrable wall.
I spent nine months in the sweet cool of
air-conditioned classrooms
wishing for summer's chokehold

IV.
sweat tickles the tip of my nose, my upper lip.
my tongue darts out from behind my teeth
and swipes the moisture like a
heat-delusioned frog

V.
in August, Dairy Queen transforms into a
watering hole for
heavy-lidded teenagers. next to them,
middle-schoolers, wide-eyed at the
puff-puff-pass in the Burger King drive thru

VI.
cicadas hum a melancholy melody,
a mournful, crying eulogy,
a misguided but well-intentioned
farewell to this past summer's eve