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

Monday is tomorrow you know..

I turned the key to my clients apartment and slid her dog through and stepped in. The neighbor next door opened her door and with great vigor and shrill, yelled, "Take that other dog ooouut!" And slammed her door closed.

I yelled back, "Excuse me! Hello?!"

She opened her door again, phone in hand and without really looking at me yells that she is newly widowed, the dog howls in the morning, the dog is barking all the time and she's on the phone with the landlord right this second.

She was like an old shark, eyes rolled back in her head. Ranting less to give me this information and more to make sure her neighbors and the landlord on the phone knew how dire this situation was.

My attempts to respond went something like, "wait a min...excuse me..don't yell at..this isn't my dog...you're.....you're aware....that I'm the dog walk.....dog walker right?"

*

My client has two little dogs, one good, one bad. I used to walk both for the price of one because I sometimes fuck myself into arrangements I regret. But then the bad one became badder and decided she would prefer to relieve herself in the elevator, hallway or in my arms if I was holding her, on her way outside.

My client thought it would be fine for me to just clean up after the dog. No.
So I said, "Not unless you want to pay me more." She said, "Oh, no just go ahead and leave her in, she can use the wee wee pads." Which lay all over her apartment like lily pads.

But this bad dog isn't of which the angry widow speaks...
You see, my client prides herself in rescuing and fostering vicious little dogs one at a time and having me walk them with the one dog of hers I will walk.

The dog the old shark is referring to is Bruno. Bruno according to my client, has never been outside before and surely never on a leash so he would need "patience and coaxing" in his walks. What ended up happening for little Bruno, as I don't only walk this clients dog and rescues but other client dogs too is that Bruno got pulled along and adamantly refused to cooperate. So much so that the walks were more like drags.

This is irritating because a dragging dog gives a really bad impression to people walking by. It seems as if, to the average clueless observer, a dog's bad behavior is always a direct result of abuse and/or neglect by the evil person walking it and a happy, good doggy is because of something else.

The last day I walked Bruno started like this, "Hi Bruno, come're....Brunoo..no don't run away, come're.." Bruno running frantically around the apartment becoming more hysterical, me closing in on him in the bedroom where he decided me with a leash meant terrible death and proceeded to urinate on and bite me.

Through a series of notes, phone texts and calls I told my client I was through with dear Bruno and she told me she thought it would be ok for me to walk him still and proceeded to tell me how troubled and scared he was and....and I don't give a shit.

So for two weeks now Bruno has become more comfortable in his surroundings, with the wee wee lily pads and the other bad dog to stay in with and has taken to barking for long periods and howling when feeling a feeling he doesn't like, and this makes widows mad. This would make most neighbors mad. And I understand.

So instead of telling the widow to go fuck herself through the door she slammed in my face I left her a note saying I understood her situation but her business isn't my concern when she yells at me and that I don't want her to speak to me again unless she can control herself. I tried to slide it under her door but it wouldn't go through so I left it on the threshold hoping she would look down at some point in the next few days.
Must. have. last. word..

P.S. Client has left a note stating how much better Bruno is and would I please try walking him again on Monday...I wrote, Yes.

jack and jerk

I passed a group of teenage boys the other day. I caught the middle part of their conversation, it went like this, "Do you ever jack off so much that.."

All involved were very intent on the subject. Eyes wide, baited breath. I'm guessing the answer to the question was, yes.

blah blah blah

rigor mortis

There is a puddle where my personality once existed. my feet are wet, pruned really..
I'm staring at an orange on my desk in this listless computer light, wondering..can I compare any part of me to this lovely orange? really...we have nothing in common. Not even in our common decline.

I am fucked like a rock who wants to run. Resistance has honed me into Stiff Girl, superhero of I Don't Want. The little therapist stands to the side and tells the class of superhero resisters "just let go of the rope of defense and fall" We look at each other and back to her. I say, "Only if death follows, sister."

I stand with my hands tightly fisted around a box of matches in a crowd of freezing people. The light is blue and fading, everything left in view is white with snow. The lumber is there, stacked, waiting. Gas is there to pull the flames higher. Feeble attempts are made to pry my hands apart. No effort, subtle, warm, harsh or aggressive wakes me from rigid desperation.

I have watched cities of dying people in the eyes of my sad, exhausted lover, fall to the ground and turn to dust. I have watched her watch me burn her constitutions, maim her elderly and turn from the weeping lonely pain of the desperate with gestapo ease.

I have never met someone like me that I liked. And I judged them. I guess being terribly defensive, morbidly competitive limits my skill of humility.

Apparently, I really need matches.
Obviously, I am the cities of dying people and constitutions. Weeping, lonely, desperate. Devour the evidence.

I'm nearer than you think

Breath, huff. Yes this word, huff.

You are out in this darkness with me. The still looming trees, the shadows, a snapping twig. I watch you stand in the light, trying to not think about scary movies and bears.

I wait as you stop searching in the dark, peering for danger. Your panoramic hunt for the boogey slows, you head settles back to front, and then I huff.

Huff deep, hard and big, you stagger back and quiver, rattling fear. It shakes through every hole in your face.

And like the monster in the dark that I am, My chest fills, I grow another inch, longer teeth, a dirtier, amused evil.
Welcome to my back yard.