To the Cat God:

There comes a point, when art is false excuse.
I don’t think this is trite, but who am I?
There’s medicine, and then there’s drug abuse.
You quit me, but I couldn’t hear “Goodbye.”
I’m not that frightened rabbit, hollow-eyed,
who asked if he could hold your hand, and you
are not that little waif who bravely cried,
in “trouble,” prick my thumbs and start anew.
Ten years, and a degree less wee deranged,
I don’t believe our beating hearts have changed.
Our “souls” were never in or out estranged.
My love was neither chance nor prearranged.
Your shadow gave no reason or excuse.
Each in our turn, we ducked and slipped the noose.

Love,
Your “ex-”

Before I could present a Christian gift
in small return for how you took us in,
you sat me at the head. Then, settings shift.
Your cooking starts before our yens begin.
A Christmas tree too great around to hug;
a star way up there higher than the clouds;
a hearth to snuggle little bugs in rugs;
your love’s a silent solstice prayer aloud.
The bunnies hop and wag their cotton tails,
(some cross the bridge,) to see you, every year.
The ease of love–the work the ease entails…!
You plant the seeds; the flowers all appear.
…Another Christmas, just in time for spring.
Please have my love; it’s all I had to bring.

I know one thing about you. It’s enough.

You have a heart to just accept this word.

Sometimes it’s soft; the better parts are rough.

It’s less the voice, and more the way it’s heard.

“Shall I compare thee” to an April night?

The cruelest month, a rose shot through with fire?

Untwist the words, and bend them back aright:

In temperance, obscure, recall desire.

I don’t know if you wanna take this trip,

or drop a second blotter micro-dose.

The parts you can’t identify, you flip.

Did you hear, “Guten Tag,” or “Adios”?

I said it as it sounded in your ear:

“You’re beautiful,” but is my meaning clear?​

Where there’s a dire need for smoke, there’s fire.

When there’s a wish for death, a dream comes true.

What dreams may come, perchance sleepers expire,

to sleep, to burn, to bleed, at least I knew.

I don’t wish on my lucky stars to fly

to magic kingdoms, glades of nevermore.

I save my shooters for the rendered sky,

the salted earth, the stumble to the door.

I live here in this ditch, and God does, too.

At least, She visits, every time it rains.

We share a drink. She asks, but nothing’s new.

The same old Earth; the same old growing pains.

She comes because I’m lonesome, for a spell.

She’s lonesome, too, but I can never tell.

I trace a drunkard’s path through time and space
that starts, and stops, and casts light into loops.
Accelerating on the planet’s face,
I take a step, and miss. I’m weightless—whoops!
There goes my mirror image of the world,
a mere mirage, a snowflake in the sun
that glinted as it rode the wind, and whirled,
touched Earth, and then decided it was done.
I do not know if this is what you want,
this carousel, these zoetropic slits.
I think that God would save us, but She can’t.
“He” is a “She.” They tell me either fits.
Which one is “They”? Why do you care to know?
“They” are to us as solar wind to snow.

They graffitied it

with two quiet ellipses

looking after me.

Who could it be? Who’ll read me like a book?
Who’ll miss me when the printed date expires?
Who’ll sniff the animal they planned to cook,
inspect the teeth, and grab a pair of pliers?
I miss a girl aware that we are not
more god than ape, resplendent, fierce baboons.
I need a woman not bugged by the thought
of snuggling close our oversized cocoons.
I do not need a vision born of fire
to strike a match and set it to my fuse
nor need I go a-traipsin’ on a wire
above the clouds, when I can sing the blues
all by myself, and every verse is free,
and all amount to one. Who could it be?

The new old normal ambles down the aisle
while we who shouted down its second stride,
some of us turn to beds to wake, to smile,
but dreams are coming, death and tax aside.
From where I hid, beneath, a trumpet raised,
our bodies, to be perfect, after All,
depending on selective doctrine praised,
now deck the trees, with merry ethanol.
Believe me: I won’t feel the killing blow,
won’t know it hung above us by a thread.
What lies above, what waits for us below,
exists in memories not of the dead.
My tenure, breathing shortly, til the end,
might not be real, but this is not pretend.

A sweet lemon drop
can make my raw tongue retract.
I don’t taste acid.

For all the pencil probes I put to “Her,”
I’m neither satisfied she is nor not.
Is there a crack? What can we now infer?
They will not go away, whether they ought.
I charge at “God” as if a contact sport.
He’s twice my size, possessing all the balls.
I hail the Virgin Mary and abort.
I hit the wall, imagining it falls.
This pastime for the one who would but can’t
is not quite faint of heart, nor fully beat.
The “God” I know won’t care if I levant.
“What does that mean?” The sound of it is sweet.
I could decamp, abscond; “He” would not know.
I think that I would miss them, should I go.