Heat Stroke

[lolo]

The shadow’s message is night;
you are the sundial it follows all day,
measuring the searing earth silently, tick-tocks,
that echo in a fevered mind.

Heat hammers down nails
in sync with a faint heartbeat
through swathes of turbans,
with malaise eyes watch a papaya orange sun
slice itself every stroke of the hour
to reveal beads of black seeds.

The lengthening dark strip taunts,
moving in widening circles, waiting
until it’s twelve, when it condenses
into tiny black drops eddying
under camel leather slippers, to disappear
past thin soles in a toe-ring’s tinkle.

Children of the sun, reeling
under an almost-year-long-summer,
their feet pregnant with dark dreams
to lend to monsoon clouds.

.