Autumn Saturday

I lay in a pool of insomnia,

my thoughts swimming lost to the tides of my mind.

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The quiet continuum of this bedroom

turns the bile 'round my belly and phantom pliers 'round my spine.

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Just before dawn, shivering to dreamscapes,

bleeding out sheets of flop sweat in the nightmare I've become.

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I awaken to the words of a prophet,

television from the maelstrom of the corpse Billy Mays.

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I stumble cold to the window and its noises,

as the church corner lot fills with swap meet malaise.

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Philly's first flush of fall and I grimace

to autumn's death luminescence caught subsuming summer green.

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And after all that, to paraphrase a wiser man,

"there ain't no cure for the summertime blues."