Monday, May 26, 2008

small lions

This little cat sits in the window behind my computer screen and the old movie speaks from the tv downstairs. The cat watches the flying bees that are eating my house and the old movie sings a Christmas song even though it's May.


This is the window I looked out of when I wrote about leaves and thunder and tongues and dirt. My thoughts want to write more about the leaves and the trees because the wind is blowing my attention to them. But I'd prefer to write about this cat who ducks as the bees rush up to her from the other side of the screen.

She is Shelly, a miniature cat from the pound in NYC. Hellion, mountain lion and biter. She is beautiful and horrible. Sometimes I think I would like to crush her skull, unhinge my jaw and shove her in. Eat her whole but the cracking of bones makes me shudder so I bite her only occasionally and imagine her as dinner.

Don't feel sorry, she bites too. She bites and she growls, mostly at me, mostly at everything.

She loves dogs. She loves Sirius, The Dog Who Raised Her, yes it's her title. Sirius still picks Shelly up by her head and tries to carry her around. It's funny, very funny to see a German Shepard carry a miniature cat around by her head.

Don't feel sorry, Shelly deserves to be carried by the head by her mom-dog.

When Sirius has tired from her mothering she lets go, Shelly walks the floors like a mountain lion with a wet, sticky head. She deserves it, she doesn't watch old movies with me. She wishes she can eat bees.

There is a bird in the trees near our window and it crashed into the screen, a challenge to the miniature feline. Shelly stood up on her hunches, front paws spread wide in a welcoming embrace to the challenger with wings, thwarted only by the screen.

she was magnificent, a true lion, she would eat goats if she could catch them.

i am a leaf

I see thunder
trembling, we leaves pass eyeless looks
seeking spaces between thunder, breeze and expiring rainless seconds


swing to
swing fro
warm thunder, translucent ripples of vibrating buzz, hum, embrace
strike and disappear in sea-blue clouds
kiss, one drop
kiss, kiss, two

thunder to see, eyeless me
and tree to hold on to like a tongue on a face
a tongue i am, I hold to a tree and taste breeze, rain and dirt
I taste everything
and oddly, i see thunder
and it excites me