The Messes We Leave
                                                             The Cats You Dump on My Door

There’s a black plastic bag sleeping in a tree
And an orange cat who treads beneath it,
Flinching at
The jack-o-lantern grins
That the coyotes give
As they prowl about at night.

                                                           Even after we take him inside,
                                                                             He’s often so scared
                                                                     Wide-eyed and meowing
                                        Like these new owners will leave him too.

There’s a whole litter
Gone in scattered bones
Except for one who watches from rooftops and trees.

                                                                  He never meows, that one,
                                             Never accepts the invitation to come in.

There’s a pregnant kitten
Barely more than skin,
And a white calico
Who stares at us with the same cunning eyes
That outwitted the wolves other pale cats did not.

             Those are the handful we tucked away behind these walls,
                                                                        The rest are not so lucky.
                                                     A pair of siblings who lost the third
                                          Two toms who yowl to each other at night,
                       Those are just the handful who survive still out there.
          Together, they are that small number out of countless dozens
                              Who disappeared under car tires and canine teeth.

When I was young I wrote of love
the ecstatic heights one may climb
to find a place above the world
then fall to depths none should have
verse existing in the extremes
polar natures were all I knew
put to page in an attempt
to express the perfect toil

that caress of life in pleasure’s realm
causing swoons that were defiled
by the pains that followed forth
whips applied to tender flesh
each had their time in my poems
put to page in couplets linked
by the rhymes that made it so
within the fantasy of my youth

high to low or hot to cold
the transitions denied the core
that average where the bulk
of survival sought to sustain
it’s in the median that most live
to deny this on the page
ignores a world I tried to see
in my penned eulogies

now in the time that’s transpired
from the past to present day
youth has stepped aside to relent
the poet grew to state much more
love still persists as do the heights
but the truth lays in the fall
the in between is now my grist
put to page as my witness.

© 2018. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20181215.

a bird ***** its wings in Rio and there is a tsunami in Tokyo.
there is a tsunami in Tokyo and your father takes your mother to bed, calls her beautiful, does not raise his voice at her, does not leave her alone in a ***** motel room. she unpacks her suitcases and never leaves Missouri.
you do not form in her womb and she stops screaming.
a tsunami occurs in Tokyo and you do not exist and there is a break in the violence of our bodies. you disintegrate before me and I melt back into the earth where I belong and you never stopped loving me.
we unbecome the casualty of our own flaws.
we were never here. we were never gone.
a bird becomes road **** in Rio and you crawl into the womb of your mother, you are the 7th of 7 and the cause of your mother's stress. there is no tsunami in Tokyo and your mother packs her suitcase and leaves for Texas, she unhappily marries your father and stays with him to the bitter end.
there is no tsunami in Tokyo and your mother dies of lung cancer, your father leaves you in may, does not kiss you goodbye, does not look back at you, you pack your stuff and he sends you away.
the birds in Rio do not sing, Tokyo bay does not roar to life.
you are here. you cannot leave.

In empty cells of buzzing hives,
In purple lights of summer nights,
Proliferate the dying sprites.

I must admit I often seek
This needle dotted anti-noise,
For in this static ever-gloom,
I hear my old friend's voice.