Previous Plans for Escape
Broken time have you been captive
on this peculiar little planet
a hundred of their sad years
the first of your species
sent to explore for reasons
long forgotten as you have been.
Crawling through a dark prison
constructed for your strangeness
the corridor long and unfamiliar
the sounds loud and sinister
someone else's misleading beliefs
yet familiar photographs on walls
of confinement and privation
the blood on the ceiling
reminds you of the sacred region
of your distant in memory planet
you have only injured swiftness
left to get to the corridor's end
into that place of journey's memory
where a hidden spacecraft awaits
but movement is nothing but mockery
of previous plans for escape.
[Previously published in Star*Line (US), Issue 39.4, Fall 2016]
Some nights a giant house cat comes and plays.
Horse high. Too large to run. Fastidious. Perfect hair.
Buttons in its blond coat are doll flesh. Grubby pink
pursing lips. Nesting deep.
Some nights the giant stays all day.
Always warm. Fur warm. Fever warm. Smothering.
Wanting to be loved. Trapping me by walls. Pressing
till I'm short of air and looking upward through its side.
Some nights the suckling house cat plays all day.
Horse rash. Gun high. Careful nails. Sniffing stools.
Buttons in its gorgeous coat are stolen words
puckered pink with blokey smiling liar chum.
Some nights the giant housecat comes and stays.
Bully warm. Fake warm. Child warm. Smothering.
Spreading beads of dainty filth the worse for smelling slightly sweet.
Smearing stripes of house cat stink at window height. On anything.
Snoozing. Quivering. Raiding meat. Spraying flobs of violence.
Shooting sticky weasel harm on leaves on glass on anyone.
Stretching its repulsiveness to bend and bite
and settle on my face.
