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I write this little narrative
and shall endevour to be brief,
for events that I unburden
may never gain of true belief.
I put to you dear reader
that tomorrow I shall die
for the events that so destroyed me
but with this wording I will try.

As a child I was so happy
and being of good disposition.
I had a fondness for all creatures,
so to care for was my mission.
With my pets as my companions
that such a pleasure is the truth.
I cared, fed and caressed them,
this was the model of my youth.

Into manhood I was pleasant.
A woman sent from God above.
Such a bride that shared my passion
of such animals I love.
Love flourished inside our home life
Our demeanour was one of that,
so we puchased gold fish and a rabbit,
a small monkey and black cat.

'Pluto' purred a lovely song,
readilly did steel my heart.
He was large, soft and so loving
and from my side was hard to part.
This large black cat worried my wife
as superstitions do so cast.
Though it slackened seriousness
as ancient ideals do not last.

Seven years we were intent
until my character did start to change.
Temperament was quick to follow,
my personality grew strange.
The demon drink was now a worry
when my wife would feel my knuckle.
For one moment I was raged
and the other I would chuckle.

One night upon my return
witha drunken mans' complexion.
Pluto wanting nothing from me
felt irate of rough connection.
Reluctantly he beared down his claw
as from my grasp he tried to fly
and as my blood did slowly trickle
I removed my knife and then his eye.

As the daylight light gave its shine
from the excesses of last eve's gin.
I from remorse supped in excess
Trying to drown this evil sin.
I was weak and so un-trying
lashing out at one and all.
No longer in control of
it seemed my destiny to fall.

Pluto recovered this ordeal,
though eye-less socket was my gift.
I could not be so surprised,
as on my approach he would fly swift.
No longer was he my ally.
No longer was he my friend.
No longer did I drink the *****
but this avoidance would soon end.

He still attended this abode
Wandering with one eyed navigation
Although I felt the pangs of grief
Grief soon changed to irritation.
One morning I did slip a noose
Around poor Pluto's scraggy throat
I hung him from a tree outside
drinking a bottle whilst I gloat.

Against the laws of God I ******
In satisfaction I do wallow
Excuse is this intrusive substance
My own forgiveness do I swallow.
Evil, horror and unkind
Depravity is what I think
These thoughts float freely around my mind
All conjured up from Demon drink.

That night such cruel deed had been done
for something happened so unfair.
As I awoke, my home in flames.
My wealth all gone I felt despair.
On visiting the smouldering ashes
that once I could call my address.
I found almost complete destruction
as i surveyed this total mess.

I came upon just one exception.
The wall where once had stood my bed
A crowd had gathered for some reason,
suprise to me it must be said.
Curiosity drew me closer
To see what they gazed at
and as if graven in bas relief
the figure of a gigantic cat.

Such accuracy it must be said
Stood proudly within the wreck
Above where my head used to rest
A rope about the creature's neck.
When I beheld this apparition,
for scarcely could I regard it less.
feeling terror to the extreme,
drew upon me such untold stress.

I came to think about that night
When fires rage was at its most
That someone must of free'd the feline
Cut it down from hanging post.
Perhaps then thrown through open window
With view to raising me from sleep
Compressed my **** fresh in new plaster
a burnt portrait for me to keep.

Such great impression on my mind.
Phantasms thought could not forget.
feeling such insincere remorse
I chose to search for similar pet.
Whilst I frequented vile haunts
with painstaking examination,
decided cat should be of similar look.
I did not want emancipation.

In a den of vile infamy
Half stupified I sat
When something claimed of my attention
In the form of a black cat.
Hazily I reeled in shock
Was this Pluto in my sight
Until after greater examining
I noticed a splodge of white.

I thought for just one moment
My mind was setting me a test
For Pluto was as black as soot
But this **** wore a white breast.
He came to me immediately
Upon me he did laize
I purchased him right there and then
I smothered him with love and praise.

My wife did so adore this cat.
But for myself after some time
Much love did turn again to loathing
and its presence cringed my spine.
The reason came the next day on
as Inhebriated I was no more
I saw that he had just one eye.
So shocked was I, I think I swore.

My wife was in a happy state
Thinking that my life had changed
Back to my old and wanted ways
Before my life became deranged.
The white mark upon the felines breast
over time appeared to define
Into a picture so distintive.
A Gallows was this eerie sign.

My sanity was in unsolid state
This creature soon to be bereft
Supporting a badge of owners crime
over its Agony and Death.
This brute of similar attribute
To he I had once destroyed,
tormented and most worried me.
My vengeance would not be denied.

My temperence was as a beast
With furious tempers flare
I almost abandoned all this strife
without so much as single care.
One day on household errand
on my brow this cat shone tax.
Whilst in the cellar with the *****
I tried to **** it with an axe.

Guarded by my faithfull wife,
I still remember what she said
Leave this poor dumb creature be.
I left the axe inside her head.
Such ****** was not deliberate
I could not resolve that this be real
but after contemplative time
I knew this crime I must conceal.

I pondered long what course to take
I could not move her by day or night,
must be accomplished down below
to keep this body far from sight.
Encasing her behind the wall
as monks once did in bygone age.
Surrounded now with morter and brick
it was the most solid of cage.

Before the last brick was replaced
I searched the house for Pluto's clone.
No sign was found of one eyed tom,
my persecutor had gone to roam.
I looked with pride at job well done.
Such rendering was no disgrace,
nothing toward had happened here
with everything nicely in its place.

I searched again to find the beast
he that to me did not impress.
Although I'd killed I slept so tranquil.
My mood did qualm and I felt fresh.
Second and third days came and went
But feline never made a show
He must of truly read my mind
Decided safer he should go.

The fourth day after assassination,
Police came around this place to delve.
After a most intense exploration,
suspiscion they decide to shelve.
In my triumph I did take on pride,
I pointed out this house so stout
and taking up my wooden cane
I gave the wall a hearty clout.

May the lord deliver me
from the fangs of acrid friend.
For squeeling came from beyond that wall
leaving my secret at an end.
In my haste to hide my sin,
I hid the corpse and cleared the room
It seems the brute had never gone
Instead it hid inside the tomb.

Here I stand in readiness
these gallows wanting company
and with this rope around my neck
it seems my wife I will soon see.
If only ego had refrained
and with that cane I'd caused no fuss,
perhaps they may never of heard
the reply from that old black ****
A poetic translation of a short story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe
Black Cat is a rhyming poem and one of a few poetic translations that I have enjoyed writing. Please enjoy.
Posted Aug 24th 2014 © Copyright Christopher K Bayliss 2014.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
(and I don’t know why we are mongrels in our heart,
but hell… Lets ask em-

Roman nose.
Broken.
pug shaped unheard of thought ******* away cos
its been awoken by high rising spirit,
but call it anything, call it the breaking of your phone
that’s replaced by another when you feel a chorus stretching
into your ***** gut when they speak, just calling…

blown away from thalidomide arms of private growths
death from long ago neither feminine nor masculine
posture of slumped morning brighter than split stare
of obliterated ***** hit gently hard and lit
my heart knows: my sheets are a poor excuse
for where the room suffers our corporeal rage
in our calming conversation

within country stare of effortless green, some:
knowingness, perceives madness from outside
its woven hands so accepted in the city as it cries,
and walks together; shed upon from all parts of its locking voice
a union within the falling parts, of islandeque love
when rising to hard abyss pardoned when nurtured,
fate, a toothless, small, finishing chew

smothered out from car fume; Buddha can’t speak anymore
birds can’t speak anymore, even the locksmiths have words
without need; i stop in a graffieted place, my veins happy
to just sense: home: proto – home, before…

with whom there is a consensus in the lewdness, rabid as 6pm
is; opened by wild cooked silk until it is made, and
ready, I’m shattered, my bloodiness has no body, none,
worth me jacking it all in, or talking, about new governments,
ours-

explosives walking through arcs of dimmed light
intoxicants highlighted in fading windows, brimming and walled open
beneath my feet, i would run, i would strip
open, the exhausted car parts
yelling, but the impermanence, of us, is the grey ebb
and flow, of engines colouring, this city, impassable
by our actions- full of Bachiacic choice, stopped at the
gate dead, when anything wants to speak inside our home,
apart from your voice, and mine

and i did not know, that cities were so moveable and
pleasurable, and that madness is always correct when animals cling
in agreement; Karma of infinite silence between them when needed-
rebearing low glance into imploding music
down past eye, oesophagus, stomach gently reseeding
hands of movement, dust spokes of haphazard drivers
like the proof in the wetness of the most lifelike dreams that
humanise the raven infancy of the winters blood

insight baked by the sun’s finally accepted sea
in clay, where we must adore what we create from our hands,
and adore the cinders of its coldness as things that can
be anything with any touch; the holograms choice in emotion
the: ‘I’:

only a background chorus
of floating crickets when we whisper, torture moons losing there grip amongst
the unsolid shapes, passing, us, as we walk through,
universal… ‘axioms’, summiting, to a peak, near the soul, when raw, but never there;
we must speak about ‘all or nothing’, in a different way, instead
as the pattern is completed by: ‘immersion’, two servants of the
womb, a judge, and a convict, and the jury broke and sprinkled
across the horizon where we walked like my grandfathers ashes

we don’t gibe, the rest, if we get there
we won’t look across the heard and pick out the
leprositic ways that are outside of our own, there is no
pride, there is no ‘knowledge’ of pride, there’s only
a proto-home, there’s unsaid gasp of what we shall eat
from the flawless flow of the weeks hard work, where we asked for no
prairie, hell, we didn’t even ask for a ticket flattened into a card
that’ll pay for it all
but hell, that’s ok

it’s a while till pay day,
but hey, i’m happier than a slave being paid in the rip-tide of several
monks and maidens authoring where i’m sold
in awesome gloom- one finds themselves a violin
even if they can’t play, even if, they have no limbs
most times, those too
go, or jitter when you don’t want them too in the middle
of the gala
i have already trusted them to you, however;
so, i’m sold, and happy.

As our grave has no flowers yet.

And we are the flowers upon that grave.

And we are the owl howling.

At that grave.

And we are the grave eaters.

And the only.

Animals.

Who can stop them.
Helen Apr 2015
Parties are for the Pretties,
the Perfects and the Prudes
the Pretties hate the Perfects,
all the rest are left to suffer
beneath their combined attitudes

One must listen to platitudes
that paints the sky so pink
The blue that bends so blindly
never barely connects so kindly
to the instance that it bled ink

Mindful of the mired muck
that insists my shoe should stick
insidious brown upon the ground
whispers words in rejection
leaving a life form I needs drink

For where I step is septic
solid ground is unsolid, at best
but my best foot forward
is  wearing pretty new shoes
mud caked, is my best guess
I have no idea what this means... Had an automatic writing moment... Take what you will from it :)
mq Mar 2019
I am haggard
and empty
-- unfinished and
a half-effort
an unsatisfying result
that makes
your heart
drop to your knees
a vocation that is unsolid
buried by talk of
money,
money,
money.
banks are more than fulfillment.
my lungs are on fire
What is the price of my mental health?
Alice Burns Nov 2014
I know your hands better than my own
Their touch, their script, their sensation
My skin an open book to be filled by your words alone
Words of care and incomparable adoration
Their form is unsolid
Yet their touch I can feel
Their movements in silence
Yet the silence I hear
The ink fades upon my skin
As soon as the words are written
I strive to catch the fading script
Before they are gone and forgotten
Lady Elle Jan 2015
I fell so in love with the story
That I suppose I forgot where I was going
Too infatuated with the fairytale
Wanting the bargain more than the sale
More in love with the Hallmark promise than him
More eager to be someone I’m not just to fit in
It’s all too easy to forget what we cannot see
To relish on everything we cannot be
Easier to love the dark when the light wants in
Easier to lose, when you have no hope to win
More than anything, I wish for a life
Not defined by materials or hype
I just want someone to be proud to utter my name
But not only for fortune, envy or fame
To live a life that’s simple and sincere
To cast away all insecurity and fear
To keep away from the fake and wrong
To show someone who is weak they can be strong
We live in a world of manufactured hopes and artificial dreams
My mind turned deaf from my own pitiful screams
It seems we’re so focused on what we cannot have
Let’s start appreciating the good and negating the bad
I want to give more back than I have received
To help even the most hopeless to believe
I have been selfish enough to learn better
Useless anger and a childish temper
It all has led me to embrace what I should
The happy, the deserved, the love, the good
Reality can ****, so we choose to pretend
But there can be no beginning without an end
So to all that have done me so UNsolid
And in the demise of my dreams you have plotted
I swallow my pride, my bitterness and hate
Your maker is not me, and he will decide your fate
I will admit I feel sorry for where you may go
Because I have a feeling your high will send you low
I would fear showing my hands if I were you
But that is why I hold them high in truth
I have forgiven you mom, dad, brother and brutes
Lovers who stole my innocence and youth
I break free of my constricting ties and roots
I break free of the foundations laid by you
Ones I have allowed to hold me back
Walking blindly, stepping on every crack
But today is the day I grab the axe
And with a swing of bravery, this cycle I hack
I will not allow my own thoughts to break me
And I will finally allow my heart to be free
Let it all go and lay it all out
I am tired of drowning in this narcissistic draught
I am saying it out loud, so it’s got to be true
I look in the mirror and say, “I forgive you”
And with all of this, I unshackle these chains
And if all that’s left are Earthly remains
I am certain I will be okay
Because the new concrete I have laid
Leaving, completely unafraid
Released of the burdens that once kept me retrained
I can only pray I leave this world better than it was when I came
And I hope that when I am gone, something I did made a change
Copyright - Lady Elle Poetry
Chris Thomas Jul 2021
I'm standing on the horizon line
Peeking back at the yellow brick road
Their eyes are transfixed upon me
And yesterday seems so out of reach

Hesitation grips my footsteps
Recalling this past of flying colors
From the birth of my blues
To the death of lavender lullabies

Secret doors explode open
Along these sunrises and sunsets
I feel each tender ***** of the needle
I slumber in pieces, yet never in peace

Waterways of indigo and dandelion
Sweep stubborn hands away from harm
Skies of silver and harmony
Pull stubborn feet off unsolid ground

I watch tangerine dreams freefall
And the octaves in my soul follow suit
I am impaled by future's rusty blade
Crimson bleeds out and radiance dissolves

Tomorrow tastes more and more bitter
The more it drips onto my tongue
Grey washes over everything I have ever been
And I turn to face a life undone
My hell is the Ocean
Under which great men are drowning themselves deeper into the dark
Madness feeds the beast with a mangled hope
Frantic squirms, the shudders, and the suspension!
A castle of bubbles so proud, anonymous cries so loud

So much water,
But not a drop to drink

Abhorrence! This nautical life!

Buoyed out in the foams, in this ocean
I pound the permeable, unsolid surface and bathe in blue fire
Across the blue desert, I moor a lonely blue ship and plant a bouquet of dry blue flowers—
To make friends with the quiet waves

— The End —