summer boredom.

Lost in summer’s wasteland.

On your front steps,

watching Ra dance high above,

“puffing away in green lizard silence.”       

Occasionally disturbed by an

envious watcher or a nosy neighbor.

Inhaling the intoxicating     

fumes from the air

and the cigarettes we    

stole earlier in our boredom.

Attempting to melt away

in an afternoon’s hellfire,

leaving us a deep pang of

voodoo on the brain,

the day dropping

its massive weight on our heads.

Waiting for when vampires come out to feed.

“Where is Neil to tell us a story?

One about a dead king and a puppet

that kills his wife and death himself.”

Lost in summer’s wasteland,   

we sat on steps made of stone,

watching the moon and her new pair of shoes,

sitting,

listening

to a cricket’s orchestra.

dead letters for living people

cats.

Things like this probably happen all the time and always quite quickly. Afterwards, when things were calmer, I said, “Wow, that happened really fast.” As if some slow motion camera trick should have made it move a little slower to better understand it all.

     

Why did the cat cross the road? Don’t really know but it ended crushed under a brown sedan in an arc of twists and spastic convulsions right in front of our driveway. The thing jumped about in demon possessed fits, bouncing like a fish gasping for air, one of its eyes had become detached and it too bounced with its own squishy squashy sounds on the pavement.

     

The culprit, a late model sedan, kept on driving on down the street; it was out of sight by the time Gisele pulled over and we got out of the car. She was all maternal and hormonal because of the baby inside her and she drew out a teary wet wail; she opened the doors of whatever afterlife that thing had in store with her own feelings of loss and grief. I wasn’t as touched by the moment as I was awed by the event.

     

As its impulses and nerve endings began to give up so did the convulsive hysteria and it settled into meandering twitching until finally nothing. It’s deflated eyeball still attached by bloody sinewy tendrils to its skull. I just stood there, bearing witness to its closing ceremony.

     

Gisele ran inside to get Benny in hopes that he could offer some advice and possible consolation; he’s the clear-headed one in these types of situations.

     

I recognized the now dead carcass in front of me. It was less than a year old and its mother was a regular at our doorstep. I’m sure it and all its siblings were born under the house. The matron feline now watched as one of her offspring passed away, perched on the ledge of the flower bed, like an Egyptian statue made of dark stone, her eyes wide and fixed on her child.

     

Benny came out and looked at the pitiful object now lying before him. Gisele noticed the mother watching and attempted to console her for her loss. It ran, not knowing enough of the human need for closure and compassion. We all agreed that it deserved a proper burial, even though we couldn’t dig up a hole and drop it in. The land was rented and wasn’t ours to do with as we pleased. Instead the county animal control would be called in the morning to come and retrieve it. I mentioned that with any luck they could send a truck out here sometime before the dead thing begins to compost and we’d be left with the skeletal remains before bureaucracy’s wheel started moving. Benny agreed but felt it would be the right thing to do, Gisele mentioned that she would make sure it would get done, even if she had to call them a few dozen times.

     

Later that night, I could hear the other strays mawling and meowing while I lay in bed. I imagined that they were mourning the loss of one of their own; somehow it made the whole event more appropriate thinking that. Looking out the window I noticed some of them fighting and growling, a few of the more dominate and aggressive males had taken to feeding on the dead; desperate times. The ones eating of the flesh were older, their fur matted with filth and missing in some areas, mangier than the rest that usually stay near the houses; tomcats that probably came from the other side of the park or from somewhere else entirely. Some of the local strays were fighting for territory and privilege and the bigger toms were attempting to keep them back and winning. The dangling eyeball had already been consumed and one of the cannibals was burrowing into the skull through the opening.

     

The sound of war continued and was getting fiercer. Something had to be done if I was going to get some sleep; I threw on some shoes and grabbed a large black trash bag. As I stepped out the door many of the cats fled, except the few braver ones and the two intruders, approaching the carcass the remainder of the group fled except the one tom that had been fighting for his right to eat. The concept of being stared down by a flea bitten cat is one of those things you don’t expect to happen in our day-to-day lives. He began growling and poised itself for attack, a medium sized stone to the head sent it scurrying.

     

Using the plastic as a shield I grabbed the body and was able to pull the bag around it, lifting it up properly. With a quick walk across the empty lot in front of the house I was at the fence to the yard crew’s facility; a large blue dumpster was on the other side. One full arm swing and the bag and partially eaten cat landed with an echoing boom. Walking back the matron feline was at her perch, watching me with eyes the color of mourning.

 dead letters for living people

office space.

The blinds sway

in manufactured warm, dry, air.

A hard drive echoes out an existence

through its motorized hum

of gears and circuitry..

          

It pitches then it falls.

Car alarms being heard

from a great far off distance,

ringing menacingly in a whisper

as an insulated call from the outside.

     

It’s beginning to rain again.

Drip, drip, drip, goes the window pain.

Frequently pacing,

methodically counting each and every step,

pausing when some pair

of counter steps walks past.  

I was intimately aware

of the people around me.

          

They are the inheritors

of the Magic Kingdom,

on an open road oblivion

that’s calling its disciples home.

               

The heat from our bodies creeps

 through vents in the ceiling,

 mingling with stars in the sky.

                    

I think I hear them falling.

dead letters for living people

the indulgence.

It’s a turbulent nausea

washing over the skin,

as if drowning and unable to swim,

in a stagnate pool of cigarette water.

     

The air outside is a sickly wet

convulsion of humidity that gets inside a person

in a slow creeping fashion.

The barflies

rested their wings

on greasy barstools.

     

Each counting off the days by

the amount of distilled liquid

floating in their skulls

         

I cursed them out and

told them they were dead already,

 just too stupid to bury themselves.

              

The impulse was strong,

I had to get out,

seek alternative belief systems

that have an opened bar

and quiet drunks.

The road is a wicked succubus

that twists and writhes in

delirious gyrating rhythms,

she’s in a sexually orgasmic

epilepsy against the protests

of a digestive system in vertigo.

My feet catch a grown man,

he’s crying over his infant whose stomach

is starting to swell from malnutrition.

    

A meal is the new Holy Grail.

The golden calf has died

on the streets of America.

When nothing is left, can you still believe in Jesus?

Snake dancing Christian fundamentalists make

their way around me and this man.

     

These righteous worm creatures

slither from street to street

establishing religious

franchises in mini-malls.

          

They step over the child gasping for air.

These prosthetic angel’s,

who view me, this man,

and his dying child as vermin

feeding on the rotting carcass of the

golden calf that they pretend

is still alive.

The sickness of the drink passes

but the perverse contamination

clings to my skin.

     

How much were we promised,

while we banged on the doors of gods

demanding answers,

justifications, and understanding?

          

While others of our own kind

were cutting away pieces

of our souls from our backs.

Selling the pieces as trinkets to those who

didn’t even have the

courage to step up to the door and knock.

Groping the final few steps to the house,

hoping that I haven’t lost my keys, yet again.

     

A shirtless Uncle Sam is sitting on the porch,

his flesh hangs in sheets from the bone.

He’s got a beer for me and one for him, he’s waiting.

Giving up on everything

else around him,

and waiting for the dream,

himself and me to fade away.

dead letters for living people