Desert Ice

Desert Ice

The summer heat is oppressive, so hot it makes your bones sweat.
Leaves hang baked limp from drooping branches defeated and tired,
Desperate trees playing possum in the harsh sun and swamp-humid air.
Sap turning to powder in their trunks as they pant for cloud a drop of rainfall,
Or the sprinklers in their concrete island prisons to point the right way just this once.
Asphalt parking jungles rinsing into mirage so close but full of modern landscaping lies.
Glimpses of breezes in frantically passing traffic are oil smoke and ash.
Sight of fresh whisper twisted to stagnant cloying muffle of bad faith smog.
Tires melting into pavement as the windows go up and A/C cranks noon high.
Out of the glare and the shimmer the Fire Man comes.
Trapping me against the building moving fast as a lit match.
Hot bricks and glass at my back, baked to boiling before it was even lunchtime.
Searing blast furnace fumes vent from parched lips as he rants.
Eddies of scorching venom slip around my shoulders like a leaden shawl.
I can’t back up any further, humidity is sticky, slick on the glass, Sunshine flypaper.
Hearing the misdirected spite and rage my heart grows cold.
Icicles form in the marrow of my bones, all that sweat turned to ice.
Toes growing numb in my high heels, feet yearning to run.
Why does he condemn me, lashing me with his white hot tongue,
Gas flame eyes filled with hate and malice?
Frying spittle flying from cracked lips, eggshell mind.
Teeth like drought-splintered bone snap and catch,
Reaching for the meat of me.
Ice water flowing in my spine, cracking. and clinking.
Excuses for my self, my race, my station,
Slide, bitter black ice, back down my throat,
Leaving me mute and shivering.
Wilting under the Sahara winds of his bile.
My glacier self eroded by grains of fiery syllables.
I stand as bone, bleached under the sun of his rage.
His jagged harsh barbs cutting,
From his lips to my tender flesh,
Bloodless yet blooded.
Eyes darting like frantic moths,
Fighting the flame, the lamp, the present death.
Looking for anchor or solace in the passing mobs.
All steer around the conflagration into the lesser heat of the summer.
Breaking off mid-sentence he turns and stalks away,
Powder keg on two pumping piston legs,
Still spitting vituperation into the hot house steamed air.
I stand in his wake, salvation in his passing,
A cloud over the sun.
I am free of his furnace force.
Yet I stand still and shaking,
Frozen.