Carmen is a Cat

 A trilogy of sorts:

Drone and Birdsong

-7.13.2024

Around the table

In Scranton tonight.

Here the fog rolls in

To ripen figs

I love you more

Each day

Says the king

Whispering sweetly

As the drone

Flits and shivers

between birdsongs.

I'm Sorry I Love You Said The King

-2019

The fog's already burned off.

He declares it is to ripen the figs.

I'd rather not say. Causality.

Miles and miles of tossed and torn plastics,

miles and miles of one after another.

Pharmacies next to butchers,

beauty shops alongside old tires.

Laborers, Syrian refugees.

There's just no plan, all so random

as if time has finally taken over and won.

Here in the wake at the back of the boat,

cancer is killing everyone.

One at a time by the dozens.

The post-coital run-off is in the gutter,

part animal and some of it fog,

the color of gray in hell.

The same ice cream truck interrupts the maghreb every day.

You can hear change falling

from

their

pockets

as they rise from the rugs-

the sky stops there,

holds down the putrid steam below

.....as night turns figs into fall.

What About Mars?

-before 2006

No more problems says the package

the cure came in, no more

warning labels and the price tag

no longer legible. It began

with flashy children and fast cars

then people started talking

about the leftover stuff

after the move out,

wondered what would happen

to the crystal ball and Japanese flag.

Where to put Mars now?

Whose house next?