Sun-Ripened Misery

I. I don't observe the day between the summer solstice and a midsummer's eve anymore I've abandoned the rituals that commemorate a shift in season, my over-ripening years and celebrate my sickening sense of hope. II. By day, I could apply a defensive membrane, an anti-cancer cocoon to protect me from the shrapnel spewed from a blooming sun but night permeates my skin and wishing stars curl up beneath like a thousand tumors challenging fonder memories with disappointments and memos about shrinking days. III. Midsummer crepuscules open sour-lighted wounds and drip watercolor ghosts down the sky leading my desire back down to withering earth and into an arid darkness blistered with promissory dimes and a thick, weeping moon that can't forget how to cry over nothing. IV. I still crave so much the hope of quickening molasses and the warmth of long, rum fingers from fermenting skies but the sun-poisoned aches of famine and fullness always alternate a layer of sun over a layer of sin. V. I'm contaminated by an anonymous hunger that spoils the wine of day, and curdles the milk of midnight I reap love, laughter, happiness the crops of heaven but they never satisfy always turning tides of emptiness on my tongue erasing summer sun with doomsday shadow. VI. Give me the gift of Heaven, a contentment sterilized coma, a throne in the cusp of Gemini and Cancer and I might wish instead for a pyre in Hell.