Life is an atrocity
We are angry we are shocked
Life is graceful
Spiderweb lines
We weave
Symbolic sounds
We weather
Whatever together
We sing so silly
We write so weird
Whenever we pleasure
To make a beautiful thing
Out of something sinister
We cling to it with desperate hands
But with no meat on our bones
It slips through
Our skeleton fingers.
They turned over and over again
In their conversation
What exactly was wrong
With their less successful, more flawed family
(the ones not present)
They discussed why and how
But mostly what.
All the things they were doing wrong
All the choices they were making wrong.
Implicitly entrenching their own identities
As the socially accepted
Correct ones
The ones who make the right choices
The ones who know what to do
The ones who are
Better at least
Than these other ones.
Pity is their imagined superiority.
Anger is where they were bruised.
Yep, another cat poem. I can’t help writing about them. They’re always sitting on me.
The cat is simmering on my legs
A tub of purring fur.
My feet are toasty
In the blanket cave underneath her magma belly.
Toasty feet are happy feet.
This heat could never burn me.
This is a collaboration between Cowdog Creatives and myself.
It didn’t go perfectly… there was some confusion as to the exact nature or species of our hero, but after we embraced the mystery, it just added to the charm. I suggest you don’t overthink this one. Unless you really want to. If so, I will accept your fully fledged literary criticisms.
Enjoy!
Once upon a time there was a time traveler named Mickey. He decided to go forward to the future and see how his kid would grow up.
His kid was an honor student in present, but in the future he was sassy figure skater. Not that this was a bad thing… but their grandfather had been tragically killed while watching a figure skating competition, and Mickey was AGHAST. He ran out onto the ice and tried to stop his kid from competing, but he got run over by the skates of a one-hundred-competitor-parade. He lost a head. He ran to catch it as it slid across the ice but it was punted by Mickey’s son while he was performing his last spin. The head landed in a stroller and the mom mistook the head for her baby and left. Mickey and his kid now had to take care of the baby, but this was tough for them since it was a human baby.
Mickey was now a Headless, and he couldn’t really see well. Everything he saw was the other doting parents. Sometimes he would stub his toe and scream profanities at them and they would be startled. Often he had to eat baby food. They always babbled loudly over him when he tried to explain anything to them.
Meanwhile, his body had to be led around by his sassy son, who frequently grew impatient and abandoned him to get lattes.
One time he abandoned Mickey’s body in the bad part of the neighborhood and a pimp found him. His body was forced into prostitution and he was very popular since everyone wanted a good time without any judgemental words. Mickey’s sassy, figure skating son had to use his masculine wiles to entice them to let him go.
But it was too late. The Headless already had syphilis.
The parents of the head watched horrified as its nose decayed off.
“Syphilis,” said the doctor.
Syphilis.
The son put the body out pasture, where it could die a peaceful death in the grass. It leaked many fluids.
On the bright side, the leaked fluids from the Headless fertilized the pasture and a beautiful, large tree grew…it was vaguely shaped like a hydra.
Bound and gagged
I try to reach you
Stretching my soul
My eyes linger, plead, accost
You turn my way
But your eyes are closed
You are absent.
Try try try try try
I can get through to you somehow
I must
You are the only one
Who can free me
