August

Epistolary Expository Prose

Howdy, Y’all,

I think the a/c has been running since May. It’s August now, driving hotly through a summer of record temperatures and daily threats of more Texas power grid snafus. I just missed being born in this horrible month, but I know several who are so saddled. Yes. I should be grateful. Maybe I am, but.

I’m also somewhat non-clinically depressed and worried, not about me even though if I ain’t dead in ten years, I will be in twelve and if I leave the world better, will it be good enough?

Fourteen billion eyes, ears, and feet, for now; and I only ask for a couple dozen or so to be alright. Go ahead. Ask. How’s that workin’ for me?

Half of humanity seems nuts and hates the other half who hate back. There’s a hypothetical, conjectural god who seems completely cavalier about it all and is dismissal about unbridled slavery, too. They insist I stock credence and believe. What? Why?

The most important thing, apparently, comes conveniently after, and it’s not heaven. It’s hell. That’s where August takes all three-hundred and sixty-five days and nothing was last or is next and some guy keeps asking, what if this is as good as it gets? Ever?

Sweet dreams are made of this,

Amen to that,

Bill

PS: Everybody’s looking (both ways) for something. Mind the gaps for what some of them want to do. Who am I to disagree?

The Eurythmics have an interesting history.

Poetry: It’s August Again

It’s August again. Just another
one of twelve named collections of days
to mark our planetary position
relative to our Sun, called sol, in our
solar system spinning reliably about
in some outer spiral arm
of our Milky Way galaxy. Our home.

August is supposed to mean something important,
like some Roman title signifying reverence;
to hold in high regard. I don’t do that for August.

As a child, school started next month,
I was often bored, sunburned, a year older.
Halloween and Christmas were far off.
I feared some raging red-faced nun’s pounding footsteps
and bone rattling beads storming my way,
with some weapon of horror in her hellish hand.
Hormones made me feel things I didn’t understand.
I still don’t get all that. Crazy life.

As an adult, August now means hot and dry. West coast
wildfires raging on while US Forest Service bureaucrats
either fight or fiddle for smarter management
policies for mother nature to ignore.

I try to be respectful of August.
It’s the end of summer, the gateway for September
as promised glories of Autumn soon fall upon us. Coolness.
And color. And feelings. October promises more.
My apologies to summer lovers, tanned bodies,
teacher’s times off, vacations (because kids), and to Caesar.
I say it every year. Only Christmas can save August.

Look both ways to seasons past and yet to come.
Mind the gaps in government policies.
They’re only human, even if they can’t admit it, until the mic is hot.

Poetry Report: August Poems

As August washes into September for another year, we shimmy along into the later first part of the second half of 2019, with all it has to offer. School has started in most places and a Labor Day weekend presents itself as the final holiday of the summer, or the first one of the Fall, or both. I prefer to think positive: Fall.

Even though my now grown children always started school in August, I never adjusted to that as anything but an egregious school requirement during the hot summer months. It’s wrong. I never liked school.

My childhood experience was for the madness of school to begin on Tuesday following Labor Day. I don’t hate any month or time of year, it’s just that on the one-to-twelve rating scale, August comes in 12th place for me. I also don’t ever know what to do with it, so I write about it.

I continue to flex my poesy (or is it prosy?) braincells and muscles each day.

August poem titles were:

1. C-man
2. Relax, Old Man
3. Antipathy
4. Impractical End
5. Cicada Call
6. Some Days
7. Seven Times
8. Give Me Time
9. Learning How
10. Song
11. The Greeting
12. DIY
13. My Grief
14. Long Live Sadness
15. The Quacks
16. For Reality Pray
17. My Monster
18. Sabbat Lost
19. Social Sadness
20. The Horror of Love
21. I did It!
22. Big Bang Theory
23. Noted Brilliance
24. Vintage
25. That Shit Sucks
26. End of the Trail
27. For a Little While Longer
28. The Hope Within Hopeless
29. Road Trip
30. Wrong Again!
31. Temulence

Look both ways more than once.
Trust your senses and verify that things have not changed.
Mind the gaps lest you find yourself in difficult embarrassment.

Poetry: August (Augustus)

Gaius Octavius Thurinus—
Augustus Caesar, got the hot one.
What a shitty deal.

I suck in August, I don’t want to face it.
The heat has gotten banal, too much sun,
too damn hot for the effort of having fun.

Into a whiny puss I turn, give me
the wonder of AC. Make three-digit days
go away. The days and nights just wrap

me into a victim swallowed by the fangs
of the most miserable month of the year.
The best thing about August is September
which is the ninth month, but means seventh.
All my favorite months
have wrong unimaginative
Latin number names.

As seasons transition look both ways and love it, if you can.
Mind the gaps. They may be a Roman mistake.

Autumn Countdown

Autumn Countdown

hobby lobby has christmas decorations out.
lots of them. hello?
i agree with moving christmas
to august.
december will be fine without it.
but it is fucking august. it’s the dog-days month.

august is boring.
lots of peeps have b-days,
but august is what?
end of summer, school…
what fool advocate of child abuse
starts school before labor day?
that’s not god’s plan, fool.

they have halloween stuff up too,
but twice as much christmas,
maybe some turkey day
shit mixed in.
but it’s hot. hot, hot: august.
and they took out the posters
i was looking for.

i don’t hate august,
but it is shamefully boring.
give it a break
move christmas there.
we have hanukkah,
yule,
kwanzaa,
new year’s eve
in December
and it would stop

many from saying ‘happy holidays’
thus getting so many
folk’s panties in a wad
over some fucking imagined war-on,
and august would be so grateful.
instead of waiting for next year,
kids could ask
what’d ya get for christmas?
in september.

pre-season football? who cares?
even the bugs
have had enough
of this crap,
bring on the fall,
september,
halloween,
and days we can sink
our teeth into.

© Bill Reynolds 8/20/2018

Look both ways, between May and September. 

Mind the gaps and the croaked cicadas.

Dead Cicada