A funerary dirge
Blows in softly on the breeze
Distant and muddied by the
City Rhythm thrumming and thumping quietly between me and the revelry trumpeted bold and brassy piercing the caucaphony intermittently
Mixing melodies of bouncing horns into
A melodrama drawn in minor key

A black cat skulks the shattered streets around me underneath the shadows cast by broken rigs of steel and octane
Bouncing on dinosaur goo baked and shaped into ***** donuts filled with pressure almost explosive if released suddenly.

He meows softly from the street-
side of a broken boxwood promenade,
Unkempt and cracked, between he and I,
Sat upon the low steps of a split landing
Leading to the threshold, transom, and door of
1603 Rendon St.
Somewhere in New Orleans
during the week to be in Louisiana
- Mardi Gras -
(Deep Gras to those who know it)
the trumpeted herald of the Holy sacred Lenten season of self imposed sobriety
But here we are, all by our lonesome
just me and myself
And also Steve.


(Steve I just made up. There is no Steve. Well… not really.. kinda well. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing…
But that’s the thing)

I put my hand out,
“Are you familiar?”
                                         Mow

“Tsc tsc tsc… no that’s not your call?”
Pss Pss Pss

                            Mreooow!

“Who are you? Why are you staring at me” the miniature panther seemed to think. He won’t much come nearer, rather he skirts a radius clear about me, but he lays down lazily on the roots of a laurel oak not far, but no closer, and stares and stirs and mews a few times softly and then slinked away silently off somewhere,
as if magically, without me seeing
Him leave.


Him was familiar.
Him definitely seemed
to be a warning of something
coming;

“I hope it’s a good thing!.. “
I thought - intentionally naive -
“That’d be nice.”
“Something good, for once.”

(Like me behaving… That’d be nice to see.)

Good Ol’ Steve…

I wonder if he’ll come back later…
…and if his life is interesting.


A siren wailing in the not too distant city
Reminds me I still hear,
That I’m still here.
just out here in it
chasing dragons and meeting demons
Witnessing magical mysteries
all through the streets…