One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck'd cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;--
All ripe together
In summer weather,--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.-"

               Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bow'd her head to hear,
Lizzie veil'd her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger tips.
"Lie close,-" Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men,
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?-"
"Come buy,-" call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.

"Oh,-" cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men.-"
Lizzie cover'd up her eyes,
Cover'd close lest they should look;
Laura rear'd her glossy head,
And whisper'd like the restless brook:
"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen ***** little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes.-"
"No,-" said Lizzie, "No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.-"
She ****** a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One whisk'd a tail,
One *****'d at a rat's pace,
One crawl'd like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl'd obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

               Laura stretch'd her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
When its last restraint is gone.

               Backwards up the mossy glen
Turn'd and troop'd the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
"Come buy, come buy.-"
When they reach'd where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss,
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
One began to weave a crown
Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
(Men sell not such in any town);
One heav'd the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
"Come buy, come buy,-" was still their cry.
Laura stared but did not stir,
Long'd but had no money:
The whisk-tail'd merchant bade her taste
In tones as smooth as honey,
The cat-faced purr'd,
The rat-faced spoke a word
Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
Cried "Pretty Goblin-" still for "Pretty Polly;-"--
One whistled like a bird.

               But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
"Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather.-"
"You have much gold upon your head,-"
They answer'd all together:
"Buy from us with a golden curl.-"
She clipp'd a precious golden lock,
She dropp'd a tear more rare than pearl,
Then ****'d their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flow'd that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She ****'d and ****'d and ****'d the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She ****'d until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away
But gather'd up one kernel stone,
And knew not was it night or day
As she turn'd home alone.

               Lizzie met her at the gate
Full of wise upbraidings:
"Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Pluck'd from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the noonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so.-"
"Nay, hush,-" said Laura:
"Nay, hush, my sister:
I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still;
To-morrow night I will
Buy more;-" and kiss'd her:
"Have done with sorrow;
I'll bring you plums to-morrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
What melons icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
Odorous indeed must be the mead
Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sap.-"

               Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down in their curtain'd bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipp'd with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gaz'd in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Not a bat flapp'd to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Lock'd together in one nest.

               Early in the morning
When the first **** crow'd his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetch'd in honey, milk'd the cows,
Air'd and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churn'd butter, whipp'd up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sew'd;
Talk'd as modest maidens should:
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night.

               At length slow evening came:
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep;
Lizzie pluck'd purple and rich golden flags,
Then turning homeward said: "The sunset flushes
Those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Laura, not another maiden lags.
No wilful squirrel wags,
The beasts and birds are fast asleep.-"
But Laura loiter'd still among the rushes
And said the bank was steep.

               And said the hour was early still
The dew not fall'n, the wind not chill;
Listening ever, but not catching
The customary cry,
"Come buy, come buy,-"
With its iterated jingle
Of sugar-baited words:
Not for all her watching
Once discerning even one goblin
Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;
Let alone the herds
That used to ***** along the glen,
In groups or single,
Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

               Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come;
I hear the fruit-call but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home.
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
Each glowworm winks her spark,
Let us get home before the night grows dark:
For clouds may gather
Though this is summer weather,
Put out the lights and drench us through;
Then if we lost our way what should we do?-"

               Laura turn'd cold as stone
To find her sister heard that cry alone,
That goblin cry,
"Come buy our fruits, come buy.-"
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?
Must she no more such succous pasture find,
Gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life droop'd from the root:
She said not one word in her heart's sore ache;
But peering thro' the dimness, nought discerning,
Trudg'd home, her pitcher dripping all the way;
So crept to bed, and lay
Silent till Lizzie slept;
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnash'd her teeth for baulk'd desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.

               Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry:
"Come buy, come buy;-"--
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen:
But when the noon wax'd bright
Her hair grew thin and grey;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away.

               One day remembering her kernel-stone
She set it by a wall that faced the south;
Dew'd it with tears, hoped for a root,
Watch'd for a waxing shoot,
It never saw the sun,
It never felt the trickling moisture run:
While with sunk eyes and faded mouth
She dream'd of melons, as a traveller sees
False waves in desert drouth
With shade of leaf-crown'd trees,
And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.

               She no more swept the house,
Tended the fowls or cows,
Fetch'd honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
Brought water from the brook:
But sat down listless in the chimney-nook

               Tender Lizzie could not bear
To watch her sister's cankerous care
Yet not to share.
She night and morning
Caught the goblins' cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy;-"--
Beside the brook, along the glen,
She heard the ***** of goblin men,
The yoke and stir
Poor Laura could not hear;
Long'd to buy fruit to comfort her,
But fear'd to pay too dear.
Who should have been a bride;
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died
In her gay prime,
In earliest winter time
With the first glazing rime,
With the first snow-fall of crisp winter time.

               Till Laura dwindling
Seem'd knocking at Death's door:
Then Lizzie weigh'd no more
Better and worse;
But put a silver penny in her purse,
Kiss'd Laura, cross'd the heath with clumps of furze.
At twilight, halted by the brook:
And for the first time in her life
Began to listen and look.

               Laugh'd every goblin
When they spied her peeping:
Came towards her hobbling,
Flying, running, leaping,
Puffing and blowing,
Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
Clucking and gobbling,
Mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
Pulling wry faces,
Demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
Ratel- and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter skelter, hurry skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes,--
Hugg'd her and kiss'd her:
Squeez'd and caress'd her:
Stretch'd up their dishes,
Panniers, and plates:
"Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and **** them,
Pomegranates, figs.-"--

               "Good folk,-" said Lizzie,
Mindful of Jeanie:
"Give me much and many: --
Held out her apron,
Toss'd them her penny.
"Nay, take a seat with us,
Honour and eat with us,-"
They answer'd grinning:
"Our feast is but beginning.
Night yet is early,
Warm and dew-pearly,
Wakeful and starry:
Such fruits as these
No man can carry:
Half their bloom would fly,
Half their dew would dry,
Half their flavour would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us.-"--
"Thank you,-" said Lizzie: "But one waits
So without further parleying,
If you will not sell me any
Of your fruits though much and many,
Give me back my silver penny
I toss'd you for a fee.-"--
They began to scratch their pates,
No longer wagging, purring,
But visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling.
One call'd her proud,
Cross-grain'd, uncivil;
Their tones wax'd loud,
Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
Elbow'd and jostled her,
Claw'd with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soil'd her stocking,
Twitch'd her hair out by the roots,
Stamp'd upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeez'd their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.

               White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood,--
Like a rock of blue-vein'd stone
Lash'd by tides obstreperously,--
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire,--
Like a fruit-crown'd orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee,--
Like a royal ****** town
Topp'd with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguer'd by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.

               One may lead a horse to water,
Twenty cannot make him drink.
Though the goblins cuff'd and caught her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratch'd her, pinch'd her black as ink,
Kick'd and knock'd her,
Maul'd and mock'd her,
Lizzie utter'd not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in:
But laugh'd in heart to feel the drip
Of juice that syrupp'd all her face,
And lodg'd in dimples of her chin,
And streak'd her neck which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
Worn out by her resistance,
Flung back her penny, kick'd their fruit
Along whichever road they took,
Not leaving root or stone or shoot;
Some writh'd into the ground,
Some ***'d into the brook
With ring and ripple,
Some scudded on the gale without a sound,
Some vanish'd in the distance.

               In a smart, ache, tingle,
Lizzie went her way;
Knew not was it night or day;
Sprang up the bank, tore thro' the furze,
Threaded copse and ******,
And heard her penny jingle
Bouncing in her purse,--
Its bounce was music to her ear.
She ran and ran
As if she fear'd some goblin man
Dogg'd her with gibe or curse
Or something worse:
But not one goblin scurried after,
Nor was she *****'d by fear;
The kind heart made her windy-paced
That urged her home quite out of breath with haste
And inward laughter.

               She cried, "Laura,-" up the garden,
"Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, **** my juices
Squeez'd from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.-"

               Laura started from her chair,
Flung her arms up in the air,
Clutch'd her hair:
"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted
For my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing,
And ruin'd in my ruin,
Thirsty, canker'd, goblin-ridden?-"--
She clung about her sister,
Kiss'd and kiss'd and kiss'd her:
Tears once again
Refresh'd her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
She kiss'd and kiss'd her with a hungry mouth.

     &nb

Cornwall, Cornwall every day
Bright sun and fresh feelings
Simple pleasures by just being here
Forward thinking into old age dotage
All our lives waiting, hoping, wishing

Never believing it could be
Out of mind with secret longing
Filling up with atmospheric  air
Sensing that emotional rush
Deep breaths swallowing cliffs and sea

Wild flowers and cows here
Hedgerows and windblown trees
Lopsided branches pointing inland
As cool salt air combs their twigs
The winding tracks disappear

Love is here all around, so strong
Heart wrenching and stomach churning
Soul and body filling up with Cornish…
Cornish, as long as it’s Cornish
It’s good!

Give us a chance to stay
Give us the chance to live
Ever on the hard granite pathways
Sounds of mewing gulls and thunder of surf
Beating on the windswept rocks and beaches

Cornish light familiar and so bright
Invading our eyes and warming our hearts
Gently massaging our faces with soothing fingers
Lifting our spirits as breaking through the clouds
It charges us with love

Fulfilled and whole
Our lives and minds gratefully feasting
The armfuls of wonder as we carry our hearts
Together,  through eternity, watching
As the sun sets in a blaze of Cornish light

Goblin Market
by Christina Rossetti

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries; -
All ripe together
In summer weather, -
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy."

Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
"Lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
"Come buy," call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
"Oh," cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men."
Lizzie covered up her eyes,
Covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glossy head,
And whispered like the restless brook:
"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen ***** little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds' weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes."
"No," said Lizzie: "No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.'
She ****** a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat's face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat's pace,
One crawled like a snail,
One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry scurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen
Turned and trooped the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
'Come buy, come buy.'
When they reached where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss,
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
One reared his plate;
One began to weave a crown
Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
(Men sell not such in any town);
One heaved the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
"Come buy, come buy," was still their cry.
Laura stared but did not stir,
Longed but had no money.
The whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste
In tones as smooth as honey,
The cat-faced purr'd,
The rat-paced spoke a word
Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
One parrot-voiced and jolly
Cried "Pretty Goblin" still for "Pretty Polly";
One whistled like a bird.

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
"Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather."
"You have much gold upon your head,"
They answered all together:
"Buy from us with a golden curl."
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
Then ****** their fruit globes fair or red.
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She ****** and ****** and ****** the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She ****** until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away
But gathered up one kernel stone,
And knew not was it night or day
As she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate
Full of wise upbraidings:
'Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the moonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so."
"Nay, hush," said Laura:
"Nay, hush, my sister:
I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still:
Tomorrow night I will
Buy more;' and kissed her:
"Have done with sorrow;
I'll bring you plums tomorrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
What melons icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
Odorous indeed must be the mead
Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sap."

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down in their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipped with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gazed in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forebore to fly,
Not a bat flapped to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one rest.

Early in the morning
When the first **** crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should:
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night.

At length slow evening came:
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep.
Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,
Then turning homeward said: "The sunset flushes
Those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Laura, not another maiden lags.
No wilful squirrel wags,
The beasts and birds are fast asleep.'
But Laura loitered still among the rushes,
And said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still,
The dew not fall'n, the wind not chill;
Listening ever, but not catching
The customary cry,
"Come buy, come buy,"
With its iterated jingle
Of sugar-baited words:
Not for all her watching
Once discerning even one goblin
Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling -
Let alone the herds
That used to ***** along the glen,
In groups or single,
Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come;
I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home.
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
Each glow-worm winks her spark,
Let us get home before the night grows dark:
For clouds may gather
Though this is summer weather,
Put out the lights and drench us through;
Then if we lost our way what should we do?"

Laura turned cold as stone
To find her sister heard that cry alone,
That goblin cry,
"Come buy our fruits, come buy."
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?
Must she no more such succous pasture find,
Gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life drooped from the root:
She said not one word in her heart's sore ache:
But peering thro' the dimness, nought discerning,
Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;
So crept to bed, and lay
Silent till Lizzie slept;
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.

Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry,
"Come buy, come buy"; -
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen:
But when the noon waxed bright
Her hair grew thin and gray;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away.

One day remembering her kernel-stone
She set it by a wall that faced the south;
Dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,
Watched for a waxing shoot,
But there came none.
It never saw the sun,
It never felt the trickling moisture run:
While with sunk eyes and faded mouth
She dreamed of melons, as a traveller sees
False waves in desert drouth
With shade of leaf-crowned trees,
And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.

She no more swept the house,
Tended the fowls or cows,
Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
Brought water from the brook:
But sat down listless in the chimney-nook
And would not eat.

Tender Lizzie could not bear
To watch her sister's cankerous care,
Yet not to share.
She night and morning
Caught the goblins' cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:" -
Beside the brook, along the glen,
She heard the ***** of goblin men,
The voice and stir
Poor Laura could not hear;
Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,
But feared to pay too dear.
She thought of Jeanie in her grave,
Who should have been a bride;
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died
In her gay prime,
In earliest winter time,
With the first glazing rime,
With the first snow-fall of crisp winter time.

Till Laura dwindling
Seemed knocking at Death's door.
Then Lizzie weighed no more
Better and worse;
But put a silver penny in her purse,
Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze
At twilight, halted by the brook:
And for the first time in her life
Began to listen and look.

Laughed every goblin
When they spied her peeping:
Came towards her hobbling,
Flying, running, leaping,
Puffing and blowing,
Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
Clucking and gobbling,
Mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
Pulling wry faces,
Demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
Ratel- and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter-skelter, hurry skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes, -
Hugged her and kissed her:
Squeezed and caressed her:
Stretched up their dishes,
Panniers, and plates:
"Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and **** them,
Pomegranates, figs." -

"Good folk," said Lizzie,
Mindful of Jeanie:
"Give me much and many:" -
Held out her apron,
Tossed them her penny.
"Nay, take a seat with us,
Honour and eat with us,"
They answered grinning:
"Our feast is but beginning.
Night yet is early,
Warm and dew-pearly,
Wakeful and starry:
Such fruits as these
No man can carry;
Half their bloom would fly,
Half their dew would dry,
Half their flavour would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us." -
"Thank you," said Lizzie: "But one waits
At home alone for me:
So without further parleying,
If you will not sell me any
Of your fruits though much and many,
Give me back my silver penny
I tossed you for a fee." -
They began to scratch their pates,
No longer wagging, purring,
But visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling.
One called her proud,
Cross-grained, uncivil;
Their tones waxed loud,
Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her,
Elbowed and jostled her,
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.

White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood, -
Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashed by tides obstreperously, -
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire, -
Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee, -
Like a royal ****** town
Topped with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguered by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.

One may lead a horse to water,
Twenty cannot make him drink.
Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,
Coaxed and fought her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,
Kicked and knocked her,
Mauled and mocked her,
Lizzie uttered not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in:
But laughed in heart to feel the drip
Of juice that syruped all her face,
And lodged in dimples of her chin,
And streaked her neck which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
Worn out by her resistance,
Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit
Along whichever road they took,
Not leaving root or stone or shoot;
Some writhed into the ground,
Some dived into the brook
With ring and ripple,
Some scudded on the gale without a sound,
Some vanished in the distance.

In a smart, ache, tingle,
Lizzie went her way;
Knew not was it night or day;
Sprang up the bank, tore thro' the furze,
Threaded copse and ******,
And heard her penny jingle
Bouncing in her purse, -
Its bounce was music to her ear.
She ran and ran
As if she feared some goblin man
Dogged her with gibe or curse
Or something worse:
But not one goblin skurried after,
Nor was she pricked by fear;
The kind heart made her windy-paced
That urged her home quite out of breath with haste
And inward laughter.

She cried, "Laura," up the garden.
"Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, **** my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

Laura started from her chair,
Flung her arms up in the air,
Clutched her hair:
"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted
For my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing,
And ruined in my ruin,
Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?" -
She clung about her sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast.
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins,
knocked at her heart
Met the fire smouldering there
And overbore its lesser flame;
She gorged on bitterness without a name:
Ah! fool, to choose such part
Of soul-consuming care!
Sense failed in the mortal strife:
Like the watch-tower of a town
Which an earthquake shatters down,
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
Spun about,
Like a foam-topped waterspout
Cast down headlong in the sea,
She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life?

Life out of death.
That night long Lizzie watched by her,
Counted her pulse's flagging stir,
Felt for her breath,
Held water to her lips, and cooled her face

the ego is a balm
for watching herds--
ezra pound is dead..

withought the ***** to make it rue
of wittier witter aphorisms never trilling forceful to undo

singular muse,
where do you come
in head or tip of head?
elusive beauty, disappear
i act in other barefoot dreams


typos bless the will to mean
of finality
of seem seam flawless be
i **** the emperor of ice cream
with concupiscent "words"
that verb the still to be a yogurt burv


single fractal frog
jumps like rhyme of toggle cog,
cutting grandma's mind

empty cup fills want
with other bristle sip+
eclipse Hypatia naked at the shrine
failure of a form
cones another phage
with peaceful loving bawl

freedom fighters flaunt
masturbatory rights of congress whim and taunt
crackle jackal fire sights
sing single missile lights

do i jest
or do i best,
lest simple techne tumble kite of waiting in the dark
of politician's lark
inventive lewd
of plaintiff plea
and rumble drum democracy

venous cud
of bovine mewing in the mud of affuenza's motherhood
strikes painful cords electric suds
that lather in the lackey's trodden figure's utter
venus aphrodite's *****'s foam

hopkins is at home
manley in the rub of constant loathsome comb
that preens a matish apparition's tomb

hello kind traveler
that takes me by the hand
rolling in the grass has never been as such
the band plays off Genghis Khan
like Gandhi spitting soup
in afternoon reprieve of ignoramOus fun

the meaning is ajar
i know i war with Stevens too to
bear the furry calousness of wartime's endless true
a bond of moneylicsious new accounted even in the dew
that sunders sounds to recreate a farflung brew
of history's adieu
which only sPeares you in the gut
(an existential reference here to trope the nom)
elusive Lear that wanders in the Foolish storm caressing cave to find
another mind
that only someone special kKnew of Kent
encapsulating time in brands that offer (a[0I]ether dust for tolling flight
growing down into the mushroom ground
spanning subtentious fraughtful nocturnes in the night
to bide that meaning's plight i wish i
wasn't altogether through
though happy to be here iwth yew

Distant island shapes beguiling
Floating ghosts of far off land
Appear sentinel as we lay
Hot and sunbathed on the sand.

Scorching beach has tricked our minds
Ever beckoning cool seas flow
Finely placed as time stands still
Myths of people long ago

Heat above the deep caldera
Yet at water’s edge a breeze
Every wave a stroke of calmness
Drags the black sand out with ease

Pushing, combing lava rock
Once a liquid burning hot
Hearts massaged by the tender noise
Deep sighs as the day burns on

Windy gusts caress unclad torsos
Smiling we hold hands out to catch
Throwing our heads back with the pleasure
Letting our warm brown frames collapse

Lazy resting towels on bodies
Sunbed dreaming, time for lunch
Decisions on the midday menu
A carafe of red or white, too much!

Later when the sun’s behind us
Deserted beaches for the night
Couples then prepare for evening
Soon tavernas come alight

Poolside dwelling welcomes back
Two weary souls from day outside
Scorching sun takes all about us
Thanks for love where we abide

Since we came and soaked our souls
In this perfect atmosphere
Love has blossomed even further
All is wonderful never fear

Patio evenings lying out
Herb aroma fills the nose
Drifting in and out of sleepy
Eyes feel heavy in repose

Cool wet noses brush our legs
Warm fur strokes a silken pass
Feline friends have come to visit
Glad that we are home at last

Nervous ******* lying still
Mewing loudly all surpassed
Two so gentle but true survivors
Bright eyes hiding traumas past

How lovely to have given respite
As more and more attached we grew
Warm and tender stroking softly
Alongside us as if they knew

The morning came without promise,
A heaviness weighing on my heart
As the minutes lengthened upon the bed.
Motivation lost, frustration returned
At full strength from the day before.
The sigh of seasons escaping my lips
As I resigned myself to the pillows.
But then a soft sound tickled my ear,
A gentle bedside mewing sort of trill…
And looking over saw the green globes
Of the patient and insistent feline
That shares the shelter of my home.
For a second, my woes forgot to linger
And the beginnings of a smile unwound
The stubborn knots inside my chest.
Then looking away, annoyed by the
Sweetness of the interruption,
I willingly returned to my brooding.
But the feline trilled again, stretching
His white-gloved paw to my face,
Tugging the pillowy bedcovers with
Such benign insistence as a parent.
Refusing the request I hid beneath the layers,
Shutting out Aurora and her chirping fellows.
But the feline trilled again and,
Abandoning my sheets, leapt upon the desk.
I listened as he shuffled about,
Sliding keys and cards and books around.
My voice called out in warning
And he paused in his task, waiting.
But when I continued to hide in bed
He started again, working fervently now.
Again I called a warning.
His response silence… and then…
A pile of books hit the carpeted floor.
My hand reached the pillow
And launched it at the good feline
Who watched as it sailed right past him.
He mewed again, and I returned
To the covers… pillow-less.
One more time he tugged at the sheets,
Before choosing another possession of mine.
A set of keys this time, then a cup of coins.
The annoyance increased until finally,
He chose the harshest persuasion of all.
Carefully, he crept along the tabletop
placing a delicate white paw on
Matching shutters, pushing lightly.
The sun! Oh the wonderful, wretched sun!
Light! Not even the covers can save me now.
At last I rise, flying at the troublesome cat
Whose swift, practiced feet escape me.
He speeds through to the far end of home,
And crouches near the hearth,
His eyes bright with amusement and victory.
I'm laughing now as he takes off again,
Me following his progress until I have him.
His sweet voice trills playfully as he rolls,
Exposing the wide, gray-speckled belly,
And I attack!
My hand descends, fingers like claws,
And a noise escapes my throat.
Fur and fingers mesh as I madly rub his belly,
As some would with a beloved canine,
Playfully chastising him for drawing me from bed.
He purrs as I laugh and take him in my arms,
Burying my face in the warm, soft fur.
We sit like that for a while before he squirms away
And leads me to his empty food bowl,
Eyes joyful and expectant now.
As the pellets hit ceramic, I find myself at ease.
Whatever lingering self-pity is now gone,
And as I leave for daily duties,
He's there by the door, awaiting the
Routine stroke of the fur on his head.
Then when I return to home, tired
and deflated from the day, he is there to greet me,
weaving about my legs and mewing sweetly.
And in the evening, when phone calls are done
And dinner has been had, he settles upon
My small lap… his mass solid, warm and reassuring
Easing me to sleep with his deep purring…
Until morning comes once more
And it starts all over again.

I see her in hooded head
Walking by in the night
The dusked shadows dewy in thought

Rumors fill my inquirious desires
As she transcends the vacuous light
Dare not I to ask where you go

She fills me full of fright

But alluring to me like catalepsy
Mewing the cats-eye of my discontent
Then around upon the angled corner

My phantasmagoria bent

running jumping
mewing occasionally

always begging for attention
always begging for a treat

a furry ball of cuteness
warm and playful
my handsome little man

my baby

sleeping on your back
snoring and twitching

my amusement
my love

fetching your favorite toy like a dog
chirping like a bird

an attention-grabbing-kitty-**** when guests arrive
an attempted escapee when then leave

poofy tail
expressive as always

I know you want me to play with you now.

One night, after she had one too many whiskey sours,
We sat on her beige couch, her legs sprawled over mine,
Swimming in a world of spins, beady eyes boasting sobriety,
Though her liver lasted five rounds with Boom Boom Mancini.
She pawed at my moustache, lathered thin with pomade,
And as her dainty lady fingers, delicious and thin, stretched outward,
Her nails, painted jack-o-lanterns, elongated into semi-sharp claws,
Her naked digits grew hairy, grey and tabby, somewhat shabby.
The arms stretched around my belly became legs of wobbly nature,
The breast that I had adored before, lost the curves,
Continuing down her back, alas to the ***, causing a prehensile shift,
To an archaic tail, one not nearly as inviting as the prior,
Trailing down her legs that used to be bare, neutered by Nair,
The follicles grew rigid, stagnant towers of black and white,
A coat of alley hardened fur now covered her whole self,
Matted with mud or something more foul, it carried down to her toes,
Now paws, unbeknownst to DNA, Scientists, God or whatever,
She was genetically manifesting her 6 year old, little girl aspirations.

But the face, O! The face, how it nestled deep in my nook,
The crook of my shoulder, burglarizing the warmth from my body for herself,
Swaddling in her makeshift womb, her face peeked up at me,
And like the least likely suspect in a line-up, I could not believe my eyes,
At a sight I did not recognize, one that could not, should not be feasible,
Her nose, once upturned with my drunken blather, was now wet, cold, and
Pink like her ******* scattered on the floor. Her whiskers
Mimicked those of my own, yet longer, stranger, like arithmetic to a baby.
Those supple lips disappeared completely, leaving behind a sand paper,
Rough grained tongue to lap at the bottom of my beard.
Her ears grew larger as if to hear a really big secret, or just
Big enough to hear the subtle purr of my heart.
The eyes, once splashed red with alcohol, now yellowed windows,
And the cries she emitted, from her little lungs bouncing around the box,
Emanated with more intensity than the most passionate bedroom theatrics,
Mewing and cooing her transition from female to feline.

I could do nothing but stare into my beer, for I knew what she was going through,
A twenty something woman, maternal clock ticking, finds refuge in
Little kittens, equating the cat to child, until it finally consumed her.
Her body changed, mind still the same, mouth smelling like Johnny Walker
And Chicken of the Sea.

Please.
Avert thy gaze
lest you want me
to place my eyes
    upon your very soul
           ******* you down
                 to the sparks
             in your bones    
Stripped bare,
      your cells will unravel,
           the very tectonic plates
                              of your being
       shifting and tripping
under
           the ripe dew of my lashes
Please, do not spread your
silken milky way
of treasures,
all of your precious jewels
exposed to the light
of the darkest night
in mysterious pleasures
For they will reflect
in the blues of my retinas
You will be speechless
for the lack of need
                        for words
I will only handle them
               with utmost care
unless, of course
you want it rough
    and flung out into the ether
           dashed upon rocks of our
                                      liquid beings
                                           in the mewing
                                   writhing wild
                 of the dark hours
And I
will take the delicacy
of your petalsilk
and ****** it into
planes of healing
It might hurt,
just by pure release of pain
but I will rock you
after your skin has
sloughed off
to reveal earthen wombs
and ***** and scars
that are only made of the
           fibers of our stars
I will rock your
            tender vibrations
                          until your very soul
                               quakes and crumbles
                   trembling into the bright
      the exposure of darkness
mixed together with light
So let me
gather you up
into the fragile sinews
of my very layers
of flesh
          of heartstrings
                          of broken
                                  and holy
                       incantations
let me pull you to me
in a whirlwind
of sacred and
blushing
          spells
that roll, like
silent thunder
into the potency
     of night

It was January of 1994
when he told me, "Son, true love,
well, it's hard to come around."
Or maybe he said, "come by."
I can't remember exactly.
Memory is foggy, age, you know.
I never thought I'd ever say that.

I've had a pet since I was born.
Not the same one, they always end
up dying. I haven't gone a year
without one close by me.
Before bed, I pucker my lips
and pretend to kiss twice
behind both ears while whispering
to them, "Goodnight." Then,
I lightly scratch their sanctum,
be it cage or kennel, so they know
I am no ghost; I am truly there.
Dog, cat, rat, it doesn't matter really;
they all just blankly stare back
and continue with their nightly business.

"If you love something, it can
never leave. Only hate can
drive others away, and that,
that's called, 'self-hate.'"
Then he laughed,
he laughed out with stretched
cheeks and gold-capped teeth
and that "eyeglasses-off" look
as if the world was deaf,
blind, and dumb. His
white collar crisp, stiff
with starch. That morning was ours.
Within earshot, the cat was mewing,
awaiting our kitchen entry where,
in the white-walled corner, sat his bowl,
staring at the ceiling, brown, dry, stale.

That morning always comes back to me
like a child returning from school.
Homework on the table and a snack
to eat just before rushing out to
meet up with the neighborhood kids for
a game of football down the road.
They've surely had talks like ours, Dad.
They've rubbed noses and brushed
pink cheeks of late lovers, flashed back
to mother and wrestling with brother.
Those important conversations
that only return with age,
we all remember them.

Down so low and down we go
Stance so low the ground we throw
Spit the rocks and mark the lot
Grab your friends, grab them hoes
Endless drive with what you got
Speed down the road make that show
See the crowd go whoa lets roll
Ya, ya
Drop the top, watch them drive
Watch them drift and slide, ya
Low as can go, so low to the ground
Ace this ride at the show in the town
Windows up and the windows down
Depends on who be hangin' around
Pass by quickly, make some cash
While they pass and while I crash
They roll off the curbside and
I roll off by exit signs
Empty tank while they keep going
Bumps and holes, my stance keeps mewing
Hitting every one that I see
Cringing every time its too clean
Making a living and making stacks
Living at home and living at the track
I can go and yes I am back
You all gonna see what you lack
Sitting at the back side you all gonna see
What I can do and what I have for me
Place down at the table, make the bet
I got this and I ain't gonna let
All you dominate and take the crown
I gonna take this town take down
Ya, Ya
The throne while you sit aside
You are sad and trash I can drive
Can't go no where don't you lie
Take the backseat while I drive
Enjoy this sweet and fast ride
The others slowly follow behind
They all gonna drift and turn
What they gonna see is my flames burn
Listen to that bass and that exhaust
The sounds of the others getting lost
Way back there I'm up here
Where did they go can they not steer
They cannot even race
They just can't keep up with my pace
While I get ahead they behind
I'm up here can they find
Flash the lights and drive away
Get up there and we can stay

The cat mews at the moon
It got the hint that soon
The moon would slide down west
Hide beneath horizon to rest.

The moon it can afford a rest
After romancing earth in jest
For the cat no rest is in sight
It has to hunt through the night.

But the cat has lunar allergy
Moonshine gives it lethargy
With eyes drooping and dreamy
It mews Beethoven symphony.

The mice they aren’t easy cheese
Don’t fall prey with any ease
They run and find the hole quick
Alerted by the mewing music!

The moon thus plays on cat a trick
Diverts the predator to music
To give its preys some respite
As the cat mews Beethoven in moonlight.

darling wouldn't you let me haunt you for a few minutes
when you're sleeping & cold & sweating & dying
I'm a God, the sky and a girl
I'll kiss your mouth until you bleed flowers
and stroke your fingers with my thumb
until you get pins and needles
and ****** every intention you ever had of hurting yourself
I'm merely a butterfly fighting with a lion
in a game of toss and tumble
under bedsheets and in swimming pools
the ****** and the ecstasy that balance on the tip of your tongue
and in the crook of your elbow
are what grounds and holds you
but my love for you is what saves you
sinks you
kills you
makes you crave redemption
but I'm not the daisy or the tulip which you have in the vase beside your bed
I am the cat you always throw out
due to mewing too loud at 3am
and trying to cuddle beside you
just as you drift off to sleep.
I am but a God, the sky, a girl
And you are but a God
The earth
And a boy.

I came home to find that the
Oven had been left on
And only the burnt crust of the brownies
Had been left uneaten and
Poor Jose had gone to bed drunk
Before nine

I opened Jose's bottle of red wine
Because it was owed to me
And I saved all our lives by turning off
The oven and I sat at my computer watching videos
And thought of how Charles Bukowski's voice
Reminded me of the Disney version of the Jungle Book
Low and soothing and liquid
That you couldn't ever grab hold of
But lived in your memory
And the wine made memory sweet

Poor Jose drinks and his memory
Hits him like a stingray
Sliding just beneath the wet sand
His life is twisting and turning upwards
Towards some horrible nesting spot
And It's just like how sometimes
The cat's mewing seems deafening and
The more pleasant someone is the more you
Wanna pull out their eyelashes
And the cream colored paint on the walls
Is moments away from driving you mad
And with all that **** dully hurricaning around
Who's got time to turn off the oven?

A lady whose heart as big as her boils
as ugly as rust, yet kindly through toils

for troubled she was and poor as a pitcher
her purse full of holes, but loving stuck with her.

And having this love with nowhere to store it –
her house filled with cats, the neighbors abhorred it.

For all through the day was scratching and crying
If they hadn't known better, they'd think she was dying.

Her house overflowing and no food to eat;
she cared for her cats like they care for heat.

And one day the folk came at her door wrapping
but she couldn't answer, for she was still crapping.

The folk weren't new; they'd been here before;
she'd leave them long often to wait at the door.

But now with no answer, the cats left to mewing;
the lady left helpless while she was still pooing.

The folk grew impatient and broke down the door;
the smell was of rodent mixed with cheap *****.

And all through their nostrils, the folk kept on smelling:
mold, cabbage and *****, then faintly a yelling.

The noise sounded desperate – a cat may be sick!
so holding their noses they trudged through the thick.

The yelling grew louder till the back of the house,
Lady needed some t.p. – instead used her blouse.

there she sat licking her paws
and her teats red and raw,
pondering, perhaps, how four black
and white kittens
happened.

There in a laundry basket
four little kittens mewed,
wondering where, their momma
was, all they knew was
hunger.

Finally settling together
all curled around each other,
all given spent in their mews,
they slept one white
and black furry
cute.

Until momma cat, her name Panda,
finished grooming her tenderness,
returned all awaking their
mewing, again.
And she licked them.

When I was a child,
I lived around
The corners of houses,
Hiding from your
Crooked nose -
So hooked
It gouged my
Superman courage
Right outta my
Teeny lil' chest.

My legs quaked a little
In my Barbie boots,
If ever I chanced to
Get locked into that
Loony gaze, of yours -

The one that
Stuck, thick on my skin,
Melting me off,
Like that little girl
I saw,
Covered in ****** -

All over -

You know the look -
The one that made me feel bad
For mewing, purring, and
Licking my paws.

Caroline and I
Shared marshmallows
At night,
Faces glowing in
Rainbow light -

Rainbows that peeked from
The filaments that
Twirled slowly,

Too slowly,
Inside Gary's
Glass indigo box,

And shared
Boogeyman dreams
On what types of things
Probably crawled from
Your crow's nest hair.

--

I saw you last week
In your silver convertible,
Fly away's tied down
'neath Oscar de la
Something,

(Or another)

With cherry red lips,
A silk blouse that slipped,
Flirtingly from your
Shimmering, bronzed
Shoulders,

Beauty on your lips,
Beauty in your hair,
Beauty spilled
Right 'cross your face,

Beauty in your poise,
Even in your toys,

Wait -
Beauty?

Had my wide eyes deceived me?

I found an old snapshot
From your date night out -
The night you should've been
Watching me,

And saw,
With my two,
The you that I knew,
'cept, actually,
You looked
Just the same -

Though, your wild hair,
Now tamed -

Plus a wrinkle and
Maybe a gray.

Half-breed kitty cat,
Mewing through the gate,
"Too few marbles in your bag,
To paw over this way?

I ain't got no mites in my fur,
Just spots my mama gave me.
We even moved into this yard,
And out that ***** alley.

Excuse my rasp,
From the sharp, sharp glass,
That stuck in my throat last summer.

As, a kind ol' woman took it out for me,
But, left a piece - though, I forgive her.

I promise I'll be fair,
If I can play,
And paw at your pretty marbles.

I'm a kitty cat too,
Like the lot of you,

Just as kitty,
And, just as able."

---

"Oh, I'm not allowed,
To even join the crowd,
'cause my fur ain't as yellow as yours?

Well, I'm a kitty cat queen -
Know what I mean?
This world will open up,
Better doors."

not exactly a poem, sorry.

The turnkey was the fumbling sort, the sort that could be taken advantage of, Carver never thought about it more than a passing fancy. The kind of thought that was dangerous, it wasn’t a ten-year stretch after all. Popping the old guard and making a break could work, would work.  A couple of years is nothing in this joint, they told him, once you get a few connections in the yard, get on a baseball team, two years is a breeze. You might even miss it all. Carver was hesitant to heed the trappings of these old relics, they were just counting the days to nothing. He knew that very well might’ve been their prerogative, but for him there would always be that something. A lonesome post-office box, containing the culmination of his life’s worth. They didn’t know about it, none of them knew, his brother, his slick-*** lawyer, not even those rats, those ******* rats that got him in here. At the time he resolved that he would part with that secret of his post office box for no less than his life. Whatever dissent had marked him as the fall-guy passed him by. Complacence led Carver here but it would never happen again. No more concessions next time.

Cellblock B wasn’t devoid of small charms. The periodic mewing of this crooner or that, with what seemed like a common intonation amongst them, all tapping from a collective unconscious. The window with a view of the yard, although mostly obscured by another cell block, was still something. Lately he had been privy to comparative bliss, his erstwhile roommate having to nurse off in the infirmary the sepsis resulting from a shiv wound after an ill-judged altercation in the mess hall. The daily motions had long since become routine, Carver thought that in many respects, this was not too dissimilar from his army days. Avoiding the unsavoury types was the key to surviving both.    

Conversations which abounded lacked privacy and tended toward the trivial, but listening in did occupy a sizeable chunk of Carver’s day. Someone, Carver was fairly sure it was Fuzzin two cells down was wondering why he was growing more hair in his right underarm compared to the left, and was resolute in uncovering the mystery. Sal in the cell to the left was perpetually reciting his conquests, ****** or otherwise, to anyone that would listen. “I was in Maine for a year and a half. Lobstering up there. I mean, what else is there to do. In Maine....” A collective murmur took the cellblock suddenly, stirring Carver out of his reverie. Sal dutifully motioned and whispered “cell inspection”, Carver did the same for his neighbour. The deputy warden for cellblock B was a short rotund man Williams, who as appearances go, looked like he should be better acquainted with ledgers and stock tickets than prison walls, but was a lax sort, permitting what modest allowances someone in his position had the leeway to do. I have heard harmonicas and guitars chiming after meals regularly, unheard of in any other cellblock. Thomson’s mattress was tossed down the way...of course every now and then a few examples had to be made to appease the warden, Thomson’s codeine addiction not doing him any favours by way of effective concealment. I exhaled a sigh, not so much in condolence as boredom, as even the strewn mattress and its assorted artefacts was becoming as familiar as the yellowed walls and the evening chill.

It was the 14th and Carver was due for a visitation. 9:30a.m. and already in the throes of being worked up, he was sure to be getting worked upon soon enough. Carver cracked his knuckles against the edge of the table in the visitation room, an apparent thick black line bisecting the table with ‘hands behind the line’ mirrored on each side. “Hello Maurice.” Carver winced, knowing that she was purposely diving into ways to put him ill at ease, commencing with the upperhand, by calling him Maurice the name he hates, not Maury. “How’s life treating you?” The smirk barely contained in the pinstriped pencil skirt, her hips less so.  “Yeah okay, it’s okay. Great to see you here.” And he meant it. Not that her presence normally roused anything like that sort of sentiment, their domestic life was a burned out cinder even before he was busted.  But there was a particular warmth in her notes, just an untouched civility foreign in place like this, tending to be drawn out from the inmates one gesture at a time, often for good. Carver thought to 8 months prior, camped at opposite ends of the house, their wares might as well have been labelled ‘his’ and ‘hers’. Evenings were carefully orchestrated, where arcs in their lines of vision only merged for the briefest of instances and only as a measure to avoid any dreaded physical contact. The prospect of *** was a joke, Carver well aware that she was ******* at least the grocer and his broker, but felt better for it. One less unfulfilled expectation he had to relieve. “I’d ask how you’re dealing with the weather, but I guess you’re keeping pretty warm these days.” She half-stifled an involuntary scoff, “You know I don’t need to hear this now, Sam is due for the dentist at 2.30 and I want to get him all washed and ready, I’m not here for your games.” “So who is it today? Talbot? Someone from the club?” Carver questioned without a hint of animosity. She breathed a defeated sigh, “You know I’m not going to talk to you about this here.” Carver jolted, the seat raised an inch or two on the linoleum, “I’m just asking if you’re ******* around, and you don’t give me a straight answer so what do I have to assume huh?” The guard was giving allowance more than he had any obligation to, but Carver’s voice was raised enough to disturb a few of the surrounding groups. He moved his way over, “Hey, what’s the ruckus here Carver, keep it down okay. What’s this box up here, move your hands back, c’mon, you know the rules. Diane piped up, “It’s just a taint, sir.” The guard prodded it with his baton, quizzically. “hmm oh yes? I thought those were seasonal, okay just keep it down.”

Carver motioned to the box, “Why did you need to bring that here? I don’t need you parading my taint around. You know I’m trying to get parole in three months? What have you done with it?” “It’s just a taint.” “Yeah, but what’s with all this purple and green stuff here? All these spiky bits, I don’t remember that.” “Well, two months ago you asked for the taint and I’ve got it here, so what else do you want from me.” Carver listened to her speak but looked passed, to the frosted glass, wishing that a window was all that really kept him between here and there. “Christ, I’ve had enough of this, I come all the way down here, spend fourty minutes caught in that dratted excuse of a highway, and you won’t even thank me for bringing your stinking taint along. AND, just last week you were all taint-this and taint-that, why do I bother.” She flung around just slow enough for Carver to observe her figure it in all its majesty. A drop in his stomach, as she moved off with authority. “Wait!” He flung himself towards her. “Please...I’m sorry....please....just...leave the taint.” “Here just take your **** taint, I hope you’re thinking of it when Sam and Eliza are eating that canned **** and asking what their father is doing so I can be sure that I’m explaining what a worthless **** you are and be accurate about it.” The words fell on heedless ears, Carver and his taint. The taint and Carver.

Fuzzin was moving back to the cellblock alongside Carver, “Buddy, your wife has some ***, you better hope my parole don’t come through before yours.... say...what’s in the box.”

(Yeah, low as go, yeah, low as can go, stance)
Low as can go, so low to the ground
Ace this ride at the show in the town
Windows up and the windows down
Depends on who be hangin' around
Pass by quickly, make some cash
While they pass and while I crash
They roll off the curbside and
I roll off by exit signs
Empty tank while they keep going
Bumps and holes, my stance keeps mewing
Hitting every one that I see
Cringing every time its too clean
Making a living and making stacks
Living at home and living at the track
I can go and yes I am back
You all gonna see what you lack
Sitting at the back side you all gonna see
What I can do and what I have for me
Place down at the table, make the bet
I got this and I ain't gonna let
All you dominate and take the crown
I gonna take this town and take down
The throne while you sit aside
I gonna sit down ain't gonna let this slide
Watch me as I take over this night
Watch ahead at the lit up tail lights
You are sad and trash I can drive
Can't go no where don't you lie
Take the backseat while I drive
Enjoy this sweet and fast ride
The others slowly follow behind
I just watch my mirrors all the time
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ja
They all gonna drift and turn
What they gonna see is my flames burn
Listen to that bass and that exhaust
The sounds of the others getting lost
Way back there I'm up here
Where did they go can they not steer
They cannot even race
They just can't keep up with my pace
While I get ahead they behind
I'm up here can they find
Flash the lights and drive away
Get up there and we can stay

woe is you,
twisted legs that taste like high school,
swallowing sticks of ink
til it seeps out your fingernails.
chicken scratch beads of blood
speak words on your rails of thighs.
woe is you, woe is you,
thunder is your presence
but gentle mewing is your soul.
let’s throw a big ******* after party
for your big ******* three-ring affair.
my fake little darling, your eyes:
shrink-wrapped in disguise,
pre-meditated, post-medicated,
meandering rings of trees
whisper ugly stories of your intentions.
my translucent lovely, your heart
sputters steam from mechanical parts.
it chugs right along, still
you question the last time it felt pure.
woe is you, woe is you

The garden served little purpose
It sprawled across the bored ground, despondent beneath the yawning sun
My mother would wail her annual rage
At the snarling weeds that softly smothered the flowers
How I loved those flowers
Rejected footballs perplexed the lawn
Their obtuse hulks spoiling that ripple of green
I found a four leafed clover there once
He poked his obscure head above his brothers: a suicide mission to bring me luck
They are all dead now
I didn’t waste nearly enough time reclined on that jealous cushion
Watching the lethargic clouds wobble on

But most otiose of all in that seldom wandered paradise was the Wall
That Wall was never high enough
I see it from my back door
Squat, depressed, sighing, each dusty clot of red brick seems so lifeless
Doomed to live out the rest of its days as a failure
All flung ***** that compress their rubbery bodies against it will soon vault over
It crudely bookends the busily neat hedge
Simply because that is where the drunken soil runs out
It fails too at its chief instruction:
Be the purgatory bridge between Our heaven and Their hell
But the Wall was never high enough

I remember the other side of the Wall
How I crouched in filth
Needless to be afraid of a cut from a single blade of grass
Impoverished chickens clucked in the squalor
How they survived such malnourishment awed me
The friends I thought I had there cheated me
And I ran from that disastrous place
Where chaos twisted the agonised branches of the hedge we shared
But it followed me like an age old Gypsy curse
Even today, a writhing, mewing splodge of night will sit on the Wall
Looking too fat for its own fur coat
It will viciously attack the thin air for a while
Perhaps accept a stroke but, seeing no morsel, wander home
But I am not spared
For I can see its wasteland kingdom from my window

It is not an evil place
But the Wall was never high enough

For a year now,
that cat balanced on the fence,

mewing the distance
of the alley ways.

Oh, how that animus
loved to complain.

his lonely cries
and the sound of clocks keeping time,

could keep me awake,
my sleep scattered for days.

Unprepared,
my eyes form rivers

spidered into tributaries,
that ***** out, in search of Your Seven Seas.

my hands treading the water,
attempting to pull out consistency.

i am amazed,
how at once You can both

stand me
and buckle my knees.

Quiet, now.
The Conductor speaks,

wet your mouths
and reeds,

for soon,
He'll point to you

and say,
"sing! small child, sing!"

Black shards of ambition cover this world of right now people,
they drown in sighs of worry over Christmas, and birthdays and races for no good reason,
These mewing children mourn the loss of people they never knew and miss the places that they've never been to.
We prayed no, we prayed someday, we prayed right now and still the hurricanes hit, still the earth rumbles, still the fires burn and still our people go hungry.
The water is running dry, the oil blood of our earth runs dry, love runs dry, stability runs dry.
The children of earth say that this is not good.
But what do children really know about the ancient space they inhabit?
Fear is for sale, plastered on the sides of buildings, screamed from behind pulpits and at press meetings, thrown into entertainment and song and sold at a price we all can afford.
We seek an answer to questions that we manifest on our own.
We want to answer ourselves, to say that we know,
And to solve a puzzle that exist only for ourselves and because of ourselves

High school was always mewing
Quietly at the window
As the window filled with rain;
High school had matted fur,
It purred and gazed attentively.

High school was constant prodding,
Poking, miniscule thefts of attention
Piled into mountains.
High school was false and sweet -
Saccharine and lemon-sour.

My friends:
The lost, the needy, the distressed,
The empty, the hungry
With open mouths stuttering
Repeatable predictable rhythms.

My friends:
The quiet, the wise, the brave,
The knights of an emaciated kingdom -
Boys with wooden swords
Defending me from the world.

High school was always shallow water,
Too loud laughter, music blasting:
A cacophony of nothing, three feet deep.
Dancing on the head of a drunken giant
Who for too long had been asleep.

Crystal, my flea bitten nuisance of a kitten, brought me a little token of affection tonight.
I deplore mice.
Even dead ones.
Filthy buggers.

But, there sat Crystal.  Mouse at her feet, mewing at me.  As if to say
"See, I love you, even if you are a blood lusting monster of the dark."

I admit, she only mewed once.  But I am certain, that is what she meant.

So as not to hurt her feelings, I donned on of my least favorite pairs of gloves and picked the rancid vermin up.
But I drew the line of pretending to eat it!

I must remember to burn those gloves.

Odd.  The candle on my desk sputters.  There is a breeze.  Although the door to my lair was tightly shut.
There is only on other way in or out.  That would be the  small tunnel I dug for Crystal.  So that she may come and go as she pleases.
Ah.  But here rests my cantankerous little fiend upon my lap.  
The breeze brings with it a scent.  One I know all to well.  
Blood.
My lair has been breeched.
Time to hunt.

~Lord Kellington

The city was hungry. A mewing came from an alley. A hollow exchange.
The innards of the district had been gutted by libertine sons.
We were scared of the silence, so we filled it with shootings, and lynchings, and stabbings, and rapes.
You came an empty reflection. It was the night before the bombs fell. I remember the way my atoms shifted. You lying there in the morning.
We fell into one another, like rabid dogs at corpses.

Limbs lined the streets.
You were distant that day. I broke ******* climbing over a fence, and lined them with the rest.
The radio tower looked abandoned.
You told me three years later you didn’t care either way. I walked you to the bridge and watched you swim the Styx.
I’d never cared from the start.

The world ended soon after.
The moon’s belly cracked, guts spilling onto the earth.
Children pelted one another with flesh. Parents stood in doorways, smiling.
The swell stretched infinitely, reaching neither peak nor fall.
I fell asleep on your grave, nestled in the cold of yesterday’s ache.

Manifesting in the high noon sky
he swirls, and turning wheels
and dives, while
I in awestruck silence wait,
and breathless wish him nearer my eye
so I could note the size of his wide frame.

Perfection of wildness on the wing,
buzzard bird your freedom
sets my soul a-sing
in praise of courageous will
which dominates yet contains everything
woven like iron bands in feathered steel.

Mewing calls splitting the air resound
as gliding in view another there
impedes one bird's
upward ****** with solitaire  
ballet of female pirouette, gyration slows      
so gentle talons can touch fearsome breast.

Monumental the speed when wills clash,
sparks spread earthward as birds
circle  in victory rush,
while I with bated breath catch
the best moment when nature takes over
as she screams then leads him back home.

Two heads
rest upon the bed
where genetics went haywire.
A simple mistake
with a complicated result
often too much for some to take.
Little cat, tumbling to life
two faces morphed and mewing
stumbling right to eternal sleep.
But it's not a life lost-no
it's a spectacle,
tiny monster,
floating in a jar
for nothing but "oohs", "aahs", and study.
Nobody mourns the little cat,
a second face deeming it unworthy
of concern.
Did mama cat know
her precious baby wasn't called a "kitten"?
but a Janus Monster,
a freak of nature,
a prime scientific diamond.
Little monster cat won't get a coffin,
it'll be jarred-catalogued-and stored,
burried in dust instead of dirt.