The temperature rises, initially
and then falls like lead on a string, plummets
to the weightless depths, interstitially 
ensconced like a valley between summits:
What is effort? What is grit? What is time,
when blood boils to a fiery, viscous pitch
and the pulses lose their rhythm and rhyme
because the block is hot and life’s a bitch?
By day I sweat through armpits and temples
to quell my soul’s corporeal furor,
but heat lingers like incense in temples
masking the stench of a thousand pilgrims:
No wonder, then, that I had to go down,
but you’re coming with me: we all must drown.