skulkers

They skulk

And that is the only way to describe it.

Cats at night,

Homeless and home-free,

Prowling the Universe, the hood,

The protectorate of Isis,

They, pussy-footing down driveways

Across street ways;

What is their point, what are they trying to say

Why do they look at me that way?...



…Like I’m crazy

Well, it’s not my idea

to fawn over the cute little f'ing things, “Well, HEY there, cutie. Well, HEY there,”

As if I were talking to a one year old child;

It is they who cull this ninnyish salutation from me,

They who make me feel like a warm mammal in pajamas,

They who, concurrently, make me feel like…



…I am an affront to sanity, talking to stupid, skulking, prowling, pussyfooting,

Conniving, feline, fraulein, fornicating, free-basing, drug-smuggling, embezzling,

adulterers!, adulterers!, MURDERERS!!

They think they’re so fucking intelligent,

Pretending they know what the hell I’m saying, what I’m thinking,

Then looking at me with necks haughtily cocked back a fraction of an inch,

With eyes appalled,

never thinking to validate me in my insatiable hunger to feel okey-dokey.



Well, all I want, after all, is just to pet them.

But they spot it. They sense the neediness. Run off like beauty queens

From an old pimp.

Not so unintelligent at all really.

Self-protection. Intuitive creatures, indeed.



The short of it is, she’s gone,

And I dreamt about her last night,

Petting her, she on her back, pawing my hand.



And if I would have only held it together in 1999,

If I wouldn’t have kept cutting my wrists, I’d have kept that apartment,

Not had to give my poopy-butt,

my black cat Audrey,

up to the APL for adoption

or for slaughter.