Wild Tuxedo

Wild tuxedo

giving me that give-a-shit look

careful as a politician

cold as a chain link fence in November

eyes gorgeous as turquoise earrings.

Wild Tuxedo

mother to the one that lived

Is he lazing in someone's home?

Is he by the road and nothing but bones?

There is hunger and then there is hunger.

The set-out bowl is always empty

in the morning 

when the traffic hums.

Wild Tuxedo

distrustful as a third wife

hardy as a weed

I wake up worrying about you sometimes

because

There is hunger and there is hunger.

There is the moon,

the refrigerator kicking on

the clock ticking

and offered love you spurn without a thought.

_______

Cat In Communication With Distant Planets

Cat in communication with distant planets 
thinks you would be more interesting if you were
a fish
or a cardboard box.

Distant planets communicate that personal transformation is possible.
Fins or corrugation become you.
Get cracking. 
__________

timely feline advice courtesy of Sunday Muse #85.

Bonus advice: don't settle. Become a fish IN a cardboard box. Your cat will thank you.

Poetry Reading

In my open shoulder bag,
the second dream
from my third night with you.
It is wrapped in satin taken
from the step of a tomcat on the sill in the dark.

That night,
clocks were lit and lined my book shelf like roosting dawn.
I was a caravan crossing your skin,
wearing borrowed Moroccan prayers
and dizzy as a thief after a chase.
I have grown my hair long, since then,
yet still it contains only certain birds, rising suns, water cups--
never the Saint Creolan medal you wore every day
when we were together. 

In my open shoulder bag,
there are patchouli leaves and musk.
I will read them to seventeen people from a small stage,
and describe in dunes what I felt that night--
our third, and the second dream I had
while resting in your arms; a baked curve of horizon
with heat lines rising 
like waterbirds taking flight 
from each glorious thorn of our entwined mirage.
______

for Karin's "April Second" prompt at Toads.

Poem About A Cat & A Blue Fence

As if, having scaled the sky,
he had stopped to gloat
there above my head
with the afternoon sun behind him.

Cat, gamboling among the gods,
are there fish in the sky?
or must you bargain with the deep
for your dinner so desired?

Cat-stronaut, glide down and grant me a boon.
Tell me, how is it when trees become fences,
fences become divine
and cats-turned-to-birds appear at my toe tip

with eyes the color of the Aegean?
________