• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

at this!”

but they don’t understand, they say something like, “you

say you’ve been influenced by Céline?”

“no,” I hold the cat up, “by what happens, by

things like this, by this, by this!”

I shake the cat, hold him up in

the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed he knows…

it’s then that the interviews end

although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures

later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-

graphed together.

he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

bad fix

old Butch, they fixed him

the girls don’t look like much

anymore.

when Big Sam moved out

of the back

I inherited big Butch,

70 as cats go,

old,

fixed,

but still as big and

mean a cat as anybody

ever remembered

seeing.

he’s damn near gnawed

off my hand

the hand that feeds him

a couple of

times

but I’ve forgiven him,

he’s fixed

and there’s something in

him

that doesn’t like

it.

at night

I hear him mauling and

running other cats through

the brush.

Butch, he’s still a magnificent

old cat,

fighting

even without it.

what a bastard he must have been

with it

when he was 19 or 20

walking slowly down

his path

and I look at him

now

still feel the courage

and the strength

in spite of man’s smallness

in spite of man’s scientific

skill

old Butch

retains

endures

peering at me with those

evil yellow eyes

out of that huge

undefeated

head.

one for the old boy

he was just a

cat

cross-eyed,

a dirty white

with pale blue eyes

I won’t bore you with his

history

just to say

he had much bad luck

and was a good old

guy

and he died

like people die

like elephants die

like rats die

like flowers die

like water evaporates and

the wind stops blowing

the lungs gave out

last Monday.

now he’s in the rose

garden

and I’ve heard a

stirring march

playing for him

inside of me

which I know

not many

but some of you

would like to

know

about.

that’s

all.

my cats

I know. I know.

they are limited, have different

needs and

concerns.

but I watch and learn from them.

I like the little they know,

which is so

much.

they complain but never

worry.

they walk with a surprising dignity.

they sleep with a direct simplicity that

humans just can’t

understand.

their eyes are more

beautiful than our eyes.

and they can sleep 20 hours

a day

without

hesitation or

remorse.

when I am feeling

low

all I have to do is

watch my cats

and my

courage

returns.

I study these

creatures.

they are my

teachers.

Death Wants More Death

death wants more death, and its webs are full:

I remember my father’s garage, how child-like

I would brush the corpses of flies

from the windows they had thought were escape—

their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies

shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass

only to spin and flit

in that second larger than hell or heaven

onto the edge of the ledge,

and then the spider from his dank hole

nervous and exposed

the puff of body swelling

hanging there

not really quite knowing,

and then knowing—

something sending it down its string,

the wet web,

toward the weak shield of buzzing,

the pulsing;

a last desperate moving hair-leg

there against the glass

there alive in the sun,

spun in white;

and almost like love:

the closing over,

the first hushed spider-sucking:

filling its sack

upon this thing that lived;

crouching there upon its back

drawing its certain blood

as the world goes by outside

and my temples scream

and I hurl the broom against them:

the spider dull with spider-anger

still thinking of its prey

and waving an amazed broken leg;

the fly very still,

a dirty speck stranded to straw;

I shake the killer loose

and he walks lame and peeved

towards some dark corner

but I intercept his dawdling

his crawling like some broken hero,

and the straws smash his legs

now waving

above his head

and looking

looking for the enemy

and somehow valiant,

dying without apparent pain

simply crawling