The black cat sat on the road of the sideways door and asked me to ask a question unanswered by the universe, for it seemed a little trepidation to ask such a stranger as me whose permanence like the door has gone beneath the waves of light and into darkness below the sun and stars, deeper than the night-cat’s fur. Yet I knew the answer and asked the question, and the stars gleamed brighter that rust, and the galaxies I saw were within the slitted eyes before my face, though I did not fall to my forgottenness in that galaxy, but lived in my ghostly form, unanswering questions of old and trying not to remember my thoughts. The cat was unknown to me after that, the tail like a feather duster leaping among the moons of my world, crowing down at me from branches and constellations. I wonder how the universe would think of such a black cat, one who does not mind the coldness of ghosts or stars, or the unknowingness of such things, and who asks for askers and questions them until the dust settles and transforms around it.

Constellations

A roadmap of our galaxy,
Intricately placed to create the Orion belt
introduces  the --
Taurus and Draco.

Discovered: given
Names and epithets that act as
bandages of history and hope;
pillars of the past, broken and shattered;
not only good memories do the constellations hold.

A roadmap millenniums aged
and still cryptic, enigmatic.
There for the fall of the Roman Empire:
A witness of the fallen bodies and cracked glass
human hearts of Auschwitz.

Constellations: surrounded by onyx, stars doctoring the constellations,
creating stories -- undiscovered and renewed.

A galaxy of muted midnights, murky blues,
darkened purples, vibrancy and life present one day,
muted and cloaked in obsidian
The next.

eyes alike
                       astronomical object
which

    s
        h
             i
                 n
                      e
                          s            ­ from


                                                      f
  ­                                 a
                   r

        
         c  o  s  m  i  c   g  a  l  a  x  y  ,

        the   s  u  n   and   m  o  o  n
                        became

                              e
                              n­
                              v
                               i
                              o
                              u­
                              s

           and   r  e  f  u  s  e  d   to

s             h                 i                   n                  e

                               even in a

l                    m                                     d
    a                    a                               u
       r                      g                       o        
         g                       e                 l
            e                        l          c      
       ­                                  l
                                     a                    
                                 n
                             i                              
                      c

        ­               i can tell that

                               you're
                                    r
                    ­               a
                                    r
                         ­           e

She is organized in a way that’s unfathomable,
An alluring contradiction,
Both still as untouched water
And expanding outward, reaching new spaces
With her fingertips.
You can’t see this because you’re too small.
You claim to be down-to-earth;
Just admit that you’re short for a man.
There’s no shame in that.

She has the eyes of a madwoman
And the body of someone more laid-back.
You can try to ****** her but she is everywhere
Above you and too far in-between.
You meet a different part of her every night.
You call her a different name,
Yet every woman is the “same.”

Except for that one.
She’s not like other girls.
You discovered a new celestial body
And now you have the right to name her
After one of your favorite gods.
Pick it out from a list,
And tape it over her mouth.

You try to calculate her patterns,
But since you met her it seems
She has worn nine different faces,
And in your sphere she dresses
As too many species to name,
So you think she should be tamed.

It’s true that she does less damage
Than she is capable of,
So test her limits, but remember
That a galaxy doesn’t truly have an edge.
She’s not a body you can lasso
And pull towards you,
Uncomfortably close.
Like you, she is made of dust and ash
And she breezes past you
And goes her own merry way.

I don’t know about Scutum-Centaurus
And I don’t know about Perseus.
I don’t know about Norma
And I don’t know about Sagittarius.

But in the Milky Way’s Orion-Cygnus
I’ve looked at every single being.
Among them all in their cosmic realms
My Galactrix, you are the sweetest thing!

We bought the galaxy
on a mortgage of borrowed time.
Because I wanted
to give you something grand
and you wanted space
and all of the stars.

Who’s in charge of this?
Not us, lying in a single bed
traversing the skies;
you need a bottle-opener
for your wine,
so you destroy a planet
and forge one in a star –
one use only.

I tell you that if we fall
into a black hole,
we’ll see in front of us
everything that will ever happen;
and you tell me you’ll look behind,
instead.

We try and find one,
but our hands come up empty,
and you say you never liked
vacuums, anyway.

I know all this.
I’ve always known all this,
and yet still,
I let you destroy
any home we create;
your hammer on the mantelpiece.

Perhaps spinning through the universe
is worthwhile,
because it means you
have to hold onto something;
finally.