Tropical low

(Image courtesy of the ever-clever fingers)

Day starts sultry
skinsucking sound
from slickystick sheets
the bathroom mirror jeers
a matressmashed face
squinting bleary under
nightsweatdamp hair,
yellowgray eyes
yellowgray tongue
yellowgray sky
glaring low and sulphurous
on essential parts of a soul
ingrown
twistangled, crammed between
tight tendons, hard blue bones.

Through the wide breathless window
the sickly smell of fresh spraypaint
aerosoling all across the still city
where
more sleepless than the rest of us
dark legions of energetic taggers
slaving through the hot taut night
have prophetically scrawled
"No Air"
in fivefoothigh cartoon letters
on every secondstory brick wall
in the chemical colours of petroleum tar.