Cleopatra

God messes up and creates Cleopatra two feet tall.

"Dude," complains Cleopatra.

"I'm the Queen of Egypt.

Men are supposed to go weak-kneed in my presence.

And I'm a midget. Hello?"

Cleopatra sets her jaw in a way that says I Can't Believe I Am Having To Explain This, and continues.

"Marc Antony walked in and asked me if my mother was home."

Her voice rises.

"I'm supposed to be Queen of the Nile and I can't even get on the rides at Six Flags or Cedar Point!"

Cleopatra flips her black hair, crosses her arms and goes silent.

Her entire aspect says, "What the fuck?"

"My child," begins God.

"Oh fuck, fuckety fuck fuck FUCK!" says Cleopatra, stomping her feet and flailing her fists with her eyes shut tight, looking like a two foot tall stick of dynamite.

"All right then," amends God. "Dude..."

One Royal eye opens.

(Now, you might not know this, but God can handle being called out.

She likes a challenge, and that is exactly the reason She has created some three billion females and filled the earth with them.

Males She tossed in later to tweak the women and keep things agitated.)

"...I'll fix it."

And so it comes to pass that Cleopatra grows three feet and four inches in a single summer, nearly all of it legs.

Marc Antony stops asking for her mother.

In fact, he finds it difficult to speak at all.

"Oh put your eyes back in your head," chirps the Queen.

Egypt becomes great.

CBS announces the premier of "CSI:Cairo."

Cleopatra hangs out on the beach with a mojito and listens to her mp3 player.

God says, "Sweet, right?"

Cleopatra tips her sunglasses up onto her shining black hair and smiles that smile that makes Marc Antony walk into walls.

"Dude! I feel ya!"

_______________

Photo: actress and celebrated beauty Lily Langtry "The Jersey Lily" as Cleopatra.

Ali Kat's Advice To Lil Kit

Don't forget

There's eight lives left

Less the one you lost today.

There are worse things than

Your own trash can

On a lazy sunny day.

Oh look--

I still got me claws.

Birdy, birdy,

Be my buddy

Just this once and that's all.

Remember, little kitty,

The two eternal laws:

Eat the meat

Spit out the bones,

And never read your own tarot cards.

_________

Muddyboots The Gypsy

Muddyboots the Gypsy

Refuses to even comb her hair

And she swings out of her darkened window, easing herself down

To the garden path and away

From policemen and their batons.

October afternoons

Find her stomping through the corn stalks

Like some celebrated sunflower actress

Bowing gracefully to her fans.

Muddyboots the gypsy

Hangs around the Sweet Roll Bakery--

She's got a little money,

But would rather steal a cupcake from some pigeon on the steps.

She wants to sleep with girls,

And sometimes does;

But they always end up trying to give her their clothes

And, in the end,

Go back to their bibles and boys.

Muddyboots the gypsy

Pickpockets the moon and makes a pendant.

After that,

Whenever she walks by women or water,

They follow without a thought.

Muddyboots the gypsy

Goes stomping past the shops.

The women who come out of there

Feel nothing at all but the scorn they learn in church.

Their woozy husbands, though,

Eye her thighs and chase their tails

Like dogs.

She sits beneath a haunted tree on evenings in November,

While the starlings go quite crazy in the branches above her head

(which is really the uncombed hair above her head)

And the racket is deeply disturbing

To the reverend, already in bed.

Muddyboots the gypsy

Goes stomping through the corn stalks in a cloud of noisy birds.

Wherever she stands,

It always rains with the sun still out.

When she's finished her pilfered cupcake,

She starts to sing the "Butterfly Duet" to herself

And fingers the tarot deck hidden in her skirts

Along with the file she keeps for picking the lock on the future.

Oh, she is wrong so wrong,

And the biddies and cops condemn her

But just sometimes, she's so sweet and right,

Like the solstice come December.

__________

A Little Fable

A little drop of water

Fell upon the wide flat surface of a stone.

After fifty thousand million billion years,

The stone began to change shape.

Ever so slightly.

Ever so subtly.

The sky asked the little drop of water,

"What are you trying to do?"

The drop of water said,

"I need a bowl to hold my tears."

The sky thought about this

For fifty thousand million billion years,

Then it asked,

"Why are you crying?"

"I thought you'd never ask,"

Replied the little drop of water.

"I cry because all that I am

Keeps pouring out again.

I cry because

My labors are so slow.

And I cry because

I am alone."

The sky thought about this

For another fifty thousand million billion years,

And then began to rain.

It rained

And rained

And rained

And rained

Until it had created an ocean

In the bowl of the earth.

I am a woman

And I want everything yesterday.

I cry because

I keep making mistakes.

I cry because

My labors are so slow.

And I cry because

I am alone,

Like a little drop of water

Sent from Heaven to a stone.

____________

A Few Facts About Tigers

For Dulce, who has a way with tigers, for Rachel, who told me about Anna Pavlova, the ballerina in the snow, and for Beatrice, always a dancer.

Tigers cannot be trained.

If you could only assemble enough pieces of their would-be handlers,

You could ask them yourself.

The creatures you see in circuses,

Those are not tigers.

Those are squirrels,

Fed to bursting

And painted with stripes.

Tigers are solitary.

But sometimes, at night, one will leap soundlessly through an open bedroom window,

And sit for hours--

Dazzled by the reflected moon light

Off a brass bed frame.

Tigers are fascinated with dancers.

Tigers have great rough tongues,

And their hearts beat slowly, steadily.

Once, there was a ballerina in the snow--

She had gotten off the train and

Stepped into the Russian winter,

Intent on sending the snow back up into the sky

So that she could appear in the capital that night.

A tiger met her there.

(or it may have been a tigress)

After dancing in St. Petersburg,

She invited this tiger into her bed.

Her manager had been going to object, but thought better of it,

And went grumbling off to his room at the end of the hall instead.

Tigers are naturally graceful beyond measure.

The next night, before the Czar, the ballerina danced with a tiger;

She knew that tigers can be

And that tigers are

The most beautiful dancers of all.

Tigers fall in love only once in their lives.

After the Royal command performance, the dancer disappeared for two weeks.

A staretz arriving from the countryside reported having seen a ballerina in the snow,

Dancing either with God

Or a very large tiger.

A short time later,

Confined to her bed,

Unable to breathe,

The dancer acknowledged that she was dying.

Her manager scolded and wept.

Her devotees buried her hotel in bouquets.

"Listen," she whispered,

"I have danced with a tiger

And by doing so,

We sent the snow back up into Heaven--

Something that even God and the angels cannot do."

Ballet, the arts, all of that, are one thing--

But a tiger, once having loved, will never change its mind.

Tigers, the last romantics, cannot be trained, humbled or caged.

I invite you, fool, to try.

__________

Only

It is only you--

Or rather,

The absence of you.

It is only air

Unfilled by your voice

Like a box without its ring.

It is only time,

Spread out like a brown rug--

A thing which must be used because it was a gift,

Unasked for,

Undesired.

It is only my heart,

Wanting to roll over, to stop, to sleep.

It is only a parting,

Only the ending

Of a very brief confluence

Of your life, and mine.

It is only life because it isn't quite death.

It is ordinary, commonplace--

It happens all the time.

_________

Athena

Athena's mother told Zeus,

"I will bear children mightier than you"

So Zeus swallowed Athena's mother

To keep her words from ever coming true.

Poor boy,

Poor boy,

There are things that even gods

Can and cannot do.

Inside her mother's body,

Athena already magnificently grew.

Inside of Zeus's body

Athena's mother grew revenge enough for two.

Poor boy,

Poor boy,

There is no telling what a righteous angry woman

Can really do to you.

Athena's midwife was the labrys.

From Zeus's forehead, Athena sprang unharmed.

Behold your daughter, born a goddess,

She arrives fully formed and fully armed.

Poor boy,

Poor boy,

Athena, mistress of war and wisdom,

Has come to deal with you.

Athena brought an owl and a lion--

The owl grew more loyal,

The lion simply grew.

Zeus's daughter, in his dotage, will remind him

There are things that even gods

Can and cannot do.

___________

Labrys--a double sided axe