It Doesn’t Get Any Easier the Second Time Around

I just finished burying my belovéd cat Kanji beneath one of the great eucalyptus trees in the garden at Edgemont Place. I had to do this once before with the Murdoch family cat, Frodo, in 1997, after I moved him in with my first wife and our four cats Kalvin, Anastasia, Hobbes, and Atari on [...]

My Cat Kanji is Dying of Skin Cancer Part 1

I took my cat Kanji to the vet because her ear wasn’t getting any better. Ever since I have known her, she’s had problems with her ears being mangy. I’m a pretty live-and-let-live pet owner — no collars and indoor / outdoor freedom, occasional wet fud and cursing them for being filthy fleabag dirt-tracking loveable [...]

Viral Bandwagon: 25 Random Things About Me

Here’s the backstory: currently on Facebook, it is all the rage to use your Notes application (read: blog) to write up 25 random facts about yourself, then “tag” 25 other people to make them have to do the same thing. Personally, I think that this was started by the Facebook people themselves as a way [...]

20-20

I. There was a woman Who I loved with all my heart. It’s the only way I know how to love. The problem I have With falling in love Is that I just keep falling And falling on through. It’s a perpetual autumn; Storming leaves of memories, Possibilities, Skeletal trees. And turning my collar up [...]

Clarity and Closure

“I don’t think this is working out…I don’t see any future with us.” This is how this heartbreak goes down: on the phone, during a conversation about something totally unrelated. I heard her go outside, heard her light a smoke, had been hearing all of this for the last six months, but somehow — being [...]

The Forefront of Your Head

Write these things In the forefront of your head And criticize later When you have no clue What you were thinking If you dare. Open the floodgate Of the pen to the paper And be damned the results When, for years, being careful Begat reams of blank paper And the idea you can’t anymore. Believe [...]

Musing

If you would only punch out my heart An spin my head right round again With that electrical discharge of brilliance, That revelation of ultraviolet split-second, When the idea’s dagger is buried And the closet door is opened, Contents spilling like freed puzzle pieces, A mess I can just shake my head at Just reaching [...]

Bye Kittnz

Ahh! Hear that sound? Of cellophane tearing across That keeps happening – It’s the unbridled loss Of my four furry ones: Hobbes Goldenfoot, Kalvin Screamerchops. Anastasia Saunterbutt, And that wily Mogwai. These four I raised Now collected by Dawn To occupy her house While she’s always gone. Locked in the basement When her mom comes [...]

Side Trip of Hyperspace

I am small again: Smell of closets, scuttle of spider; Withdrawing as the fat withers from my mind. Rediscovering someone vaguely familiar Only from the corners of my eyes In old photographs Or in passionately scribbled lines. In this transition, Is it supposed to endure Or is it supposed to break? Phoenix, do you hurt [...]

Thee Angelkitten

A purring song of liquid honey Angelkitten, Burnished golden metallic wings, Diamond-bright dinky halo and Those kitten-soft feet to mommy-paw Your eyes shut at sleepytime, Hunting your hair, As the wind from the waves of her home, Corner-of-your-eye cat-quick paranoid spirit Of Cleopatra Mykelti kittenator flatulator, Calling-cards framing those other cats, Wrestling with an orange [...]

The Hard Edges of the Night

A lot of nights, Laying awake in the middle Of Ocean Beach, I hear screams or yelling And then nothing. Sometimes it is two men Or just one with No one answering. A man and a woman, The sound of a slap Then flats smacking the ground Staccato, quickly, then fading. Harleys and their riders, [...]

Pine Tree

I climbed up as far as my courage And strength would take me One day in the life of a monkey-boy; Those branches were spaced With a long-armed youth in mind – A kind encouragement Beckoning boys to the heavens, That grandfather pine tree still stood As of the date of this writing, And it [...]

Brooding Lies

Tonight the Frogg lies brooding Pulling his lilypad up to his chin Trying to suppress his inverted grin From wrinkling his forehead into furrows Deep enough to plant the weeds That spring from pressure seeds. That water which is like time Still flows through the swamp He’s caught cat-napping without his bilge pump Up to [...]

Samwise

Sam has gone to the Grey Havens. Sixteen years of good loving life, defining the role of a kitten, a cat: fat, lazy and sleek, loving and caring without seeming to. My lucky black cat.

The Blessed Heart Sacred Moon Wanderlust Spelunking Club

I am the sole member of the The Blessed Heart Sacred Moon Wanderlust Spelunking Club and I lead myself through the Scottish bogs under a sky liberally sprinkled with the Milky Way galaxy. Wet shoes and grey spirits, feather boa fog tendrils bathing my sock-tops, no compass points me to my Holy Grail. Two kittens [...]

Humbled in an Easy Chair

Tonight the old feelings come back; the old feelings of enemies — long ago when humankind believed and could see their mistakes unclothed as Demons. They crouch in tree foliage and prowl like cats or gargoyles on the roof; they know they work through dreams and they know we have forgotten our humble beginnings in [...]

A Poem on a Note on the Fridge

I forget the joy of writing then reading what I’ve written, curling like a kitten play-fighting with the same gentle hands that stroke poems from the sand of the beaches that I walk on when I haven’t forgotten that I love to be alone sometimes with my simple childish rhymes.

Wading Through the Cattails

I went to find my childhood buried in the morass of my memory; discarded in a moment of adolescence trying to be an adult before I knew what that was about. So me and a shovel and a dream go wading through the cattails and the frogs, looking under lilypads and scouring the undersides of [...]

Constipation

a cat calls beneath my window and my stomach hurts from constipated poetry; I’m turning into mush from trying to lift these literary weights and be like them, dreaming of storefront windows and cardboard displays…

Hush

you asked me once upon a time if I could hear the speech of the sea. I said yes and that was where are agreement ended; you heard eulogies, laments, cries of change and supportive flesh, the echoes of watery hands drumming on cliffsides, rolling rocks into its stomach, a maelstrom of creative fury controlled [...]

Leopold

Leopold sat on the steps of the 3 story apartment building with a paper bag between his knees. He was wearing a torn red flannel shirt that draped over it, so it was a little bit hidden. It looked like there was a sandwich in it. I sat across the street on my fire escape [...]

Black Jack

I and when the madness comes she creeps around the corridors, pausing to stomp on cats’ tails pausing to drive in rusty nails and slam subconscious doors behind my eyes. II it would be easy one day to fall down and stay, not moving, wherever I was and not respond to my rescuers; to get [...]

Impressions

you’re a kitten curled up after a day of curious exploration, ears twitching with dreams and unconscious poise, lulled asleep by the intricate rhythm of your heart rattling in its cage. you’re two shiny blue eyes like children on Christmas day, lips slightly parted and twinkles streaming like the stars in the Milky Way, one [...]

Kitty Litter

if I was a cat I’ve chased a mouse of yours chewed it and played to your chagrin. dragons care so little – true dragons, not gold-hungry worms – that they’re made from clouds and always fly. an orange lightbulb transforms a room into a Wonderland; I made a game of room chess of all [...]

Cat Hide

I am the prickle which makes your mother start and cover your eyes as if you, being young don’t know the fear of the closet. I am the voice that whispers through the crack; all that’s left when the door is shut tight, caressing you with words from a green foot-long tongue, slithering out from [...]