Summer
Before August
Has cracked the earth

The hot sun
Before the humidity
Chokes off breath

A June
Like a memory
From my girlhood

Our heat
Like the night
I surrendered

My virginity
So noisily
You remember

I could have been a contender,
Given a healthy body
With pre-emptive problem resolution,
A singer-songwriter of some import
Who challenged the best of her generation
Song for song, drink for drink,
And came out the other end
Intact and alive.

They are all gone now, from age, from drugs,
Falling out of favor with the muse
Or from boredom,  and I am still here,
A smoky contralto and a poet of some import.

Life is so very strange.

From the bus,
  A pattern emerges
 
Men, early morning,
  The first to work  

Women, the afternoon,
  Back home for the second shift

Men, always rushing
  To be not last
 
Women, always worrying
  When a man will barge ahead
      Unthinkingly

Without trauma,
  What good would life be?
I miss my broken leg,
  The days Wall Street died,
The moments I knew Nixon lied,
  Those were my days.
 
Each time the earth quakes,
Cities crumble, mothers lie awake,
Tidal waves on my TV at night,
How good can life possibly be?

Eminem aint got no class
He acts like the world's
  Biggest horses ass
He thinks he's a poet
  Because he can rhyme
But the crap he writes
   Aint worth a thin dime
  
He's an overnight sensation
   Cuz he acts like he's black
The white kids all really love him
   And mimic his tired old act
He's a pale pale rider
   On the lamest one trick pony
A baseball capped poseur
   And a foul mouthed shady phony.

How quaint, how droll, a Senator had an affair!
And this time, it would seem, the opposite sex
Was involved, at least that's what he implied.
Nothing is shocking, nothing is new,
The men of the senate are always men
Before they are a senator;

A social conservative, a blue-eyed liberal,
Politics makes little difference.
Testosterone is everything,
Powerful men and naive young staffers:
The women are there for the taking,
Wives not included, of course.

A formless mass, the fertilized egg,
Nothing but potential, genome
And phenotype, waiting to express itself
And determine its possibilities:
A cat, a dog, a spider, or a plant,
A fish, a bird, a man or bonobo
-- All things lie in the future
Laid down in the neurobiology,
DNA and RNA, genes and timing
And the occasional random act.

Rain delay on the scoreboard,
Lightning behind the Nationals sign,
Chicago Cubs playing on the Jumbotron
Between the Miller Lite and Coca Cola ad squares;
The tarp is on the diamond, first base line to left field,
Rain bouncing pitter patter pitter patter.

Water puddles on the grass, 
Draining slowly through the subterannean,
The fans hide back up the concourse
While a handful brave it out in their seats
Sheltered by the third deck.

The rain continues to fall at a steady pace,
Not light enough to shout "Play Ball!"
Nor hard enough to cancel the game:
Time to get a Ben's Chili Dog and a beer
And light a candle that the Big Unit
Will make it to the mound to win his 300th.

Oh no, the rain come down,
Another god damn thunderstorm,
Flooding the roads and filling the runs,
Washing the trees and small dogs away.

Oh no, the rain come down,
Another body soaking afternoon,
All the women are drenched to the bone,
All the wet men admiring our breasts.

Oh no, the rain come down,
There's not a dry spot for miles around,
I don't think it's ever gonna end,
We're never going to see the sun

Ever ever ever, ever ever again,
No not never.