It's Just Hot

And I move from den to kitchen
from kitchen to the back porch,
but it's hot there as well.
The basement is cooler, a cave
into which I slowly climb.
There is a couch there
and the stereo with jazz, and so
rather than painting my marks
on the walls, telling my story
and that of my tribe, I regress farther
and am a bear lying on an old couch
letting the music play softly
over the sleep into which I fall.
I stop moving between rooms
the heat is a thing of the upstairs world
while I live prehistorically in the cave
of my basement listening to
another man playing piano by himself
in another cave somewhere
that I hope is as cool and comfortably alone.