Multi-storied summer

Cuckoo-cuckoo of a cuckoo
races against the ambulance sirens.
Too hot! I whinge like a baby.
I gaze meaninglessly
at the meaningful fall of the leaves.
A frog that doesn’t dare to croak for rain,
a fish in an evaporating pound —
I am a tadpole,
part frog, part fish.
Does the intensity of heat get lighter after you bear it? 
The heat I bear now has  
turned my back into a buffalo hide.
 
I fan myself as if I were a stove.
Wind always lifts fire.
From beneath the scalding sweat
I could hear my skin scream.
One heat is heaped up on another.
On the streets still moist with mirages
it’s never too hot to stage tug o’ wars for water.
 
I’ve closed the gate. I’ve locked the heat out.
How will I expel the heat inside?
The thing is —
King of Snakeheads Paritta has yet to end
when
a thermometer that died from a heatstroke winds up in a cold room.

Multi-storied summer