skipping in sweltering heat
to the japanese market!
ramuné and pocky
chocolate melting between fingertips
to smash the glass?
the marble is worth it
just don't leave the shards for some underpaid worker!
the bookstore
focal point and hangout
obnoxious rowdy loud
twelve year olds in miniskirts
hair and brains fried
tragic? perhaps
leaf through post secret
basking in air conditioning
(it's not fascist if it's free)
exit stage left
walking barefoot
wading in fountains
blistered feet turn burnt and black
writing pseudo-inspirational quotes on coffee-stirrers
and shoving them in the perfectly manicured green
like headstones
the sun sets
wander through graffiti tunnel
now a barbed-wire cage
plots to throw paint-filled balloons at the wall
vandalism nostalgia
later,
sitting in the park
lying on the slide
spinning on the tire swing
dizziness, earth has spun off its axis
lost in the swirl of night sky
nothing is real
but the soft-rough wood chips
tickling and prickling
lying in fertilized grasses gazing at the blank sky
(the lights are too bright for stars to be visible)
legs itch and crickets fiddle
trees sigh
home:
sirens police
upturned car
drunk driving perhaps?
a mark of the prep.
stroll through neighborhood
night air is moist and cool
darkness except
yellow-golden glow of streetlamps
silence except
croaking of bullfrogs
chirp of crickets
furious dogs
then to the local park
to swing in the shadow of the brightly lit tennis courts
walk home again
say "hi" to passing strangers
home x2
for the first time in ages
water disappears with a brownish tint
dirt of adventure
end.

oh so bourgeois.