Summer is Gross (A Poem)

Summer--not just every 
Hollywood teen protagonist's dream girl.
It is also the most loathsome
season for those of us who loath sun.
Because our lack of melanin
makes us feel solar exposure
will bring us that much closer to
done with and over.
Or because
we find humidity
the height of
stupidity.
Or because we
rightly perceive
the sun’s intensity as
cosmic hostility.
The sun quite clearly
picking on me,
like my high school
bully, whose name was
no joke 
Cook.

At least Cook only pushed me in
lockers and called me names.
The sun poisoned me.
In eighth grade, as if
I didn't already burn enough 
with the embarrassment
of early adolescence,
on a camping trip, the sun
wantonly
attacked me with its
ultra violent rays
until I was sick for days.

Some are confused.
Likely sun-boozed.
They revel in the rays.
Bask in the burn.
Get nude in Nantucket.
They are not embarrassed to say things
like, “I’m going to New Jersey.”
They ‘lay out’ on blankets
to be cooked like so many
Fourth of July Franks.
Wearing their tan
like some sort of crown
as if soaking up what
beams on down
makes you
a hero and not a
hash brown.

Don’t these wieners know
that a hot day is
best countenanced
inside a frigid, air-conditioned apartment,
shades drawn, watching
a National Geographic special
on Antarctica.
Or better yet the feeling of summer
perceived as a distant memory
on a crisp, October stroll.
The sun back to its rightful place.

Nowhere near us.

But maybe these Apollogists
are just keen to the
sticky truth that the hot
mess outside of us is not the problem.
That it is really a lack of
wherewithal
why we’re with fall.
That perhaps the raw
power of sunbeams
when absorbed through
a substantial
slathering of
SPF 5000
could make us heartier.
More robust.
More likely to
tell the waiter, “No, I did not
ask for a Diet Coke. I’d like
you to bring me a regular Coke
as soon as that's convenient.”

Nah.
They
simply cannot accept
the objective,
indisputable truth that
summer is gross.