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• Classic-Fiction

stay still now, mother

stay still.

the horse tossed the jock

the horse fell

then got up

on only 3 legs—

the 4th bent nearly in two

and all the people anguished for the jock

but my heart ached for the horse

the horse

the horse

it was terrible

it was truly terrible.

I sometimes think about one or the other of my women.

I wonder what we were hoping for when we lived together

our minds shattered like the 4th leg of that horse.

remember when women wore dresses and high heels?

remember whenever a car door opened all the men turned to look?

it was a beautiful time and I’m glad I was there to see it.

no way back to Barcelona.

the world is less than a fishbone.

this place roars with the need for mercy.

there is this fat gold watch sitting here on my desk

sent to me by a German cop.

I wrote him a nice letter thanking him for it

but the police have killed more of my life than the crooks.

nothing to do but wait for the pulling of the shade.

I pull the shade.

my 3 male cats have had their balls clipped.

now they sit and look at me with eyes emptied

of all but killing.

Manx

have we gone wrong again?

we laugh less and less,

become more sadly sane.

all we want is

the absence of others.

even favorite classical music

has been heard too often and

all the good books have been

read…

there is a sliding

glass door

and there outside

a white Manx sits

with one crossed eye

his tongue sticks out the

corner of his mouth.

I lean over

and pull the door open

and he comes running in

front legs working

in one direction,

rear legs

in the other.

he circles the

room in a scurvy angle

to where I sit

claws up my legs

my chest

places front legs

like arms

on my shoulders

sticks his snout

against my nose

and looks at me as

best he can.

also befuddled,

I look back.

a better night now,

old boy,

a better time,

a better way now

stuck together

like this

here.

I am able

to smile again

as suddenly

the Manx

leaps away

scattering across the

rug sideways

chasing something now

that none of us

can see.

the history of a tough motherfucker

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and

terrorized

a white cross-eyed tailless cat

I took him in and fed him and he stayed

grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway

and ran him over

I took what was left to a vet who said, “not much

chance…give him these pills…his backbone

is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow

mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at

these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here, the pellets

are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody

cut it off…”

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the

hottest in de cades, I put him on the bathroom

floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn’t eat, he

wouldn’t touch the water, I dipped my finger into it

and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn’t go anywhere,

I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to

him and gently touched him and he looked back at

me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went

by he made his first move

dragging himself forward by his front legs

(the rear ones wouldn’t work)

he made it to the litter box

crawled over and in,

it was like the trumpet of possible victory

blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I

related to that cat—I’d had it bad, not that

bad but bad enough…

one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and

just looked at me.

“you can make it,” I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up and falling down, finally

he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the

rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,

then got up.

you know the rest: now he’s better than ever, cross-eyed,

almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in

his eyes never left…

and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about

life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,

shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say, “look,