𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞 · 𝐍𝐨. 𝟓

By This Time — John Rullo (song)

Our summer series keeps asking what heat does to tempo, breath, and attention. Here’s the fifth feature.

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐜𝐞
“By This Time” is an original track by songwriter John Rullo—a street-level meditation where small, ordinary moments turn fever-bright. The song sits in the pocket and lets time stretch: heat as meter, memory as echo, patience as pulse. Listen for the way stillness gathers pressure, then releases it.

𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮
“You would think by this time 
We could separate fact from fiction”

🎶 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧

• Watch/listen on YouTube: “By This Time” — John Rullo
• More from John’s channel here

𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞 · 𝐍𝐨. 𝟒

heat: selections — Steven Hirsch

Our summer series keeps asking what heat exposes at home, in the body, and in the body politic. Here’s the fourth feature.

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐞𝐦𝐬:
Steven Hirsch’s poem cycle moves like a July thunderhead—across clay studios and wasp nests, Medicare forms and metadata, street politics and island air. These poems track how a person keeps making, caring, raging, laughing, and grieving through scorching times: from kiln-fire craft notes and cat elegies to apocalyptic news cycles, from Tibetan windhorse invocations to a Key West sweat-and-salt itinerary.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞:

• “𝘊𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘶𝘮” — Trees as teachers; wheel-thrown vessels; “time is the blues”; lists that toggle between house paint, JSON for Adobe Experience Manager, and saying goodbye to a cat named Neko.
• “𝘛𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘕𝘶𝘮𝘣 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘤𝘺” — Prepping, seagrass, Port Protection, Copilot AI summarizing a DAM migration, and a stark memory of finding a father gone.
• “𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦?” — A vow against fascism and forgetfulness, calling on dragons, snow lions, and the bodhisattva reflex to “rescue your momma from hell.”
• 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘔𝘳. 𝘝𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦” — Unflinching political invective that refuses euphemism. (Content note: strong language.)
• “𝘒𝘦𝘺 𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘓𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦” — Jet skis and iguanas, pelicans training their young, seaweed gas-smell, a guitarist on Duval Street, a rooster in rain—ending on the soft/sharp discipline of a heart that still cares.

𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮:

“The trees teach you all you need to learn.” 
“Time is the blues and it passes too.”

𝑪𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒖𝒎

The trees teach you all you need to learn.
That being said, clay whispers like crisp silk
as you slip the spin side into a flare 
smooth the edge with a sponge
and fire the kiln.
Contact distant narcolepts with black opal flashes and burning feathers.
Stir the suspension with a touch of acid and moon glass
phased to melt at Mercury’s passing.
Time is the blues and it passes too.
Trees whisper and we are hard of hearing.
·
Impermanence lecture via spray jet to clear deck-railing wasp nest.
Flow chart of spigot to lawn valve to hose coil to hot tub to drainage ditch.
Register for Medicare A and book tickets for the Keys.
100 ways to burst an egg yolk, melt cheese against meat.
Review top ten paw support protocols, throw pasta at the wall.
Clean out 2 decades of old t-shirts and size 42s I’ll never get into.
·
Paint the closet, paint the parging, paint the spindles and railing.
Paint the lake and the spillway, paint a week or two away in October.
Paint the last crickets chewing Indian summer sprouts.
Like grandma said, you’ll be a painter and then so what.
Sing a Jon Anderson song in full voice at top volume for grandma.
·
Refuse to be ripped off by Empire Today in a last minute bait and switch on vinyl flooring.
Learn how to build a JSON data structure for a metadata import to Adobe Experience Manager.
Refuse to be ripped off by National Floors Direct in a last minute no credit cards shocker.
Learn that the path to taxonomical glory is named Anastasia, Anastasia Metadata.
·
Sit and rap your own knuckles with a ruler for fun; pluck an eyelash for your box of cat whiskers.
Stick them all on a canvas with a glue gun; paint a cat, paint a dozen cats running
pouches swinging in the hot summer sun.
Paint an old man pushing a grocery cart with a yellowtail tuna saku block
and a hundred pounds of cat litter.
Say goodbye to my sweet friend Neko, put to sleep way too young.
·
Cats teach you all you need to learn.
That being said, rain sours like warm milk
as you make avocado toast naked off the grid.
Wrap up a long, painful career as a technologist in a plaid suit.
Fine tune your meat processing units with lysine treats.
Class is seated with cardboard notebooks open to boot
to categorize eyebat messaging that gives you an A.
Raise a hand extended in sleep to send a root down deeper
bring the rain back up to catalyze these lessons of age
from chapters revealed in the glaze of sun that remains.
·
·
·
𝑻𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝑵𝒖𝒎𝒃 𝑵𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒄𝒚
A prepper’s irradiated Captain Crunch
would last about 2 months I’d say
with no sun to charge the solar generator.
·
A svelte elephant from Gatunga Kenya
tracked by a bracelet and a QR code
got a tarot reading from the hanging vines —
The fool card told her to go to Garatula.
·
Electric cable of survival; deep transmission urge
Get there or die; one way ticket to oasis of twilight ease.
Pissing in the wind actually
like yelling at the cashier at Walgreens.
·
Tied into a fabric, we are a fashion show
draped across Time’s slick shoulders
dying to be naked.
·
I’d chew grass and piss milk
If I could drive you to the beach and see your
pale skin glisten with coconut oil
your freckles on a sunbeam.
·
Where is the deep state when you really need them?
Like reading the wind’s intent, we freeze, alert, listening.
You must take care of the world, tolerate numb normalcy
ache every morning the sun chimes across the window sill.
·
Speak softly to the cat as he bats his eyes upside down
on warm brick tile.
Sip your eyebright and mullein in apple juice
and let it all out.
·
Stay tuned to Port Protection, not CNN or worse.
Stomp through seagrass to get your crab claw
in sriracha mayonnaise.
·
Precocious but inept, the wild acolyte shuddered
as the last zoom call on DAM migration strategy
was summarized by Copilot AI.
·
Smooth as mushroom white chocolate deep recall:
waking to a loud TV, only to find
my father dead on the sofa
the morning he was to fly back to the Bahamas
for immuno-therapy.
·
Desert migration restores blood flow to the extremities.
Come out from your bomb shelters and stretch.
New normal makes you double and triple take on
what is and what is not reality.

·
·
·
𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒆?
Where is our Windhorse?
Where is our King Gesar of Ling?
Who will champion our freedom
preserve our right to individually be
without fear of fascist or nazi?
·
Will we once again turn a deaf ear and a blind eye
allow ourselves to die at the hands of demons
burn in a fire of our own clothes and teeth and bones
moaning in suffocation for the crime of being born?
·
Who will turn the pages of their hymnal
while children are cut down with their bowls held high
toward eyes that deny their right to grow?
How can we limit our defeat and retain
our right to sing in a hallowed space and hold
our souls high toward any source of grace?
Who will fail to resist the iron fist, track the war to its very source?
O the shame of this crippled vehicle! O shame the lame Windhorse!
·
The Dalai Lama won’t claim his next life in a Chinese Tibet but he will be born.
Would we all be strong enough to resist birth into a prison
birth that comes with threads already worn, hair shorn and crusted
with blood and dust and ashes of their parents mixed with rocket fuel?
·
Who will sit on their sofa with their pet on their lap watching reality TV
eating Lactaid ice cream?
Who will respond to the CTA of a Chinese website selling fake gold chains
but not to their own cousins dying in dark basements in Ukraine?
Who will fail to think, fail to consider, fail to feel the pain they inflict
until the whip is turned on their own shoulders, until they turn to cement
in range of the blast, sick standing stones weeping shadow tears?
·
When every moment is a deja vu that verifies the persistence of the illusion
Will we once again turn a deaf ear and a blind eye
turn the pages of our bibles and hide behind our government’s lies?
Turn turn turn our country to shreds
Turn turn turn toward democracy’s end.
With no Washington or Gesar to bear the burden of the sword
flame of future hope for all dims, scarred scales tip with the weight of fear and ignorance.
·
How can we increase our Windhorse in all directions?
Dragons, white tigers and snow lions roar 
Garudas scream our intention to the growing moon
a wish-fulfilling gem that vanquishes all enemies of the dharma.
All beings are your mother. Go rescue your momma from hell.
Your soul will fly like Windhorse to the celestial realm.

·
·
·

𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒍, 𝑴𝒓. 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆
Never believe the devil when he puts his hand on your shoulder
and whispers into your ear the secret formula for turning sin into gold.
Chicago pope draws a red line with his red shoe and dares you to cross.
“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
You hem and haw and backtrack before god
never leaving your salvation or retirement fund to chance.
Nevertheless, you are going to hell Mr. Vance.
·
Midterms will show your tenuous hold on the levers of power
plunges in a spiral tailspin, collapses the orange tower of lies
In a judicial maelstrom.
Saw your picture in the sistine chapel holding your son.
Pants on fire you did not know photos weren’t allowed.
You learn fast the rules don’t apply to you somehow.
Tell that to the red face of Satan as he swallows your head.
You are going straight to hell Mr. Vance.
·
You once described your boss as a ‘cynical asshole’; ‘America’s Hitler’.
You didn’t even vote for him, and now you wash his dirty laundry
expecting it to get clean; you dream of succession by being a mean shit.
Kill the writ of Habeas Corpus and you fall into the pit.
When everyone can be captured and unfairly harassed
deported for a critical post, or misinterpreted tattoo
when the Supreme Court can’t even sway your chainsaw trance
you are going to hell Mr. Vance, straight to everlasting hell.
·
In hell there are no couches to fuck
No false hypocrisies to muck up your dignity.
In hell, the devil’s cock burns in your gut
pounds your eyes out of your skull with bizarre, insatiable gore
and shoots a molten cum that incinerates your heart.
In hell the nightmare continues even when you scream ‘no more!’
In hell you run for weeks to gain refuge in the biggest free country on earth
only to be turned away, or have your children torn from your arms
never to be seen again.
In hell there is no ‘happenstance’ karma, it’s all very deliberate payback
for the pain you have caused and are causing with every day that passes.
You have earned your place there JD, strategery be damned.
·
You believed the devil when he put his hand on your shoulder and whispered in your ear.
Now you have no voice to complain when the ground falls away beneath you.
I doubt Jesus will rank you high enough to travel through the pearly gates
bearing the indelible mark of the prime minister of hate himself
the enemy of diversity, equity and inclusion — wolf in wolf’s clothing
hell hound pretending to be a wolf pacing in oval strides
like a skater on thin ice over a river of fire.
·
·
·
𝑲𝒆𝒚 𝑾𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝑳𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆
Corn kernels spill from
Cornholio sacks
litter the grass and
bleached coral sand
Rattan day bed covered
In iguanas 
Surprise diamond-infused Durban 
wrapped in Cuban leaf
soothes and smooths
as I cough like a maniac
on our peeling white terrace
overlooking the Gulf of Mexico
after first jet ski tour.
Still amazed how the water turns
from green to blue
as we cross the gulf ledge.
Ski slaps the waves
and my nuts take the brunt
of ocean force
always downward.
·
Seaweed in hot sun
smells like natural gas
awaits pelican wing spark to blow.
Momma dives to catch small fish
her chick chases her to steal it.
She keeps dropping it into the surf for him
in a teaching game.
·
Everything is atremble
hungry for brunch.
Geodesic Doppler domes
track floating bales of coke from Cuba.
Local Duval St. bar guitarist
plays In A Gadda Da Vida solo
as I eat croque madame in the sweltering sauna.
“Honey, grab my inhaler and the Lactaid
I’ll be right out.”
Walk past Hemingway’s house
swarming with tourists in pastels.
Rooster in the rain dances across hot pavement.
·
Heart be soft, mind be sharp
lemon squeezed over conch.
I need oxygen on the flight home
‘cause my lungs are half-collapsed.
Having a genuine heart for the world
costs far more than the grouper piccata at Square Grouper
so I go all in and replace the old floors with vinyl

cackle like my grampa at the silliest things.