You try to make them civilized and grown-up,
but the words are infants,
they want to crawl around and yell for a bit.
You know that an eye is upon you.
watching you in that whelping room
where creation rearranges molecules
into a planetary system of speech
made of matchsticks and glue.
A poem is about to be splashed,
onto a speeding window of light.
Logic and reason must first
bash their bulbous heads together,
until their mechanical, self-winding brains
fall out.
The collective humming of incubators,
begins to lipread your silence.
A process similar to hand washing.
Eventually a swaddled indigenous form,
unwraps itself,
it begins to walk upright.
Matchsticks and glue
form readable fragments.
You begin to hope,
that someone inside that watching eye
will name what you have done -
even attempt,
to explain it to you.
Autumn, and the smolder
of inert sap fills every nose,
ignites flameless fires.
He buries his nose
in a pile of russet and gold-flecked leaf,
a squirrel scolds him from a high branch
but he’s a sniff-happy hound
and does not care.
The woods are falling
under a death-cheating spell,
Spring will awaken them
with a whelping lick.
He, on the other hand,
will fall sick and die.
The path veers this way and that,
man and dog
crisscrossing a landscape
until as scant as autumnal smoke
they drift homeward.
The land around here looks like it belongs to the side of a lake,
it slopes downward gently, suggesting a meeting with water,
front-lawns surf on grass-rippling winds.
Water is forced uphill by a secret pumping station
on the far shore of the State freeway.
When it rains we consider this a near drowning,
backyard dinghy’s and row boats creak in the wet winds.
Our aboveground pools allow only space
for the whelping of baby seals, and we honor that.
The land around here looks like it belongs to the side of a lake,
it slopes downward gently, suggesting a meeting with water,
it front-yard-surfs on grass rippling winds,
it slowly sails under the puffy power of clouds.
but the water is in our bathtubs and sinks,
it is in our plumbing and it gurgles and clanks
when its alcohol content runs low.
Water is forced uphill by a secret pumping station
on the far shore of the State freeway.
When it rains we consider this a drowning,
none of us will swim, considering swimming
a prolongation of our ultimate dark night,
besides our above ground pools allow only space
for the whelping of baby seals, and we honor that.
There is of course, always ice for tinkling glasses.
If the rain persists, we are all drowned by evening
then we can only roll gently, and dare not trust
the floppiness of potted feet,
and so we tumble towards an imagined lake
one that waits for us
at the end of someone else’s drive.
However by morns early light
we are washed up on this tilting land again
and all is as dry as beached fish bones,
bones that are known to be reconstituted into pills
for the medication of occasional overbrightness.
MEOW Cats
MEOW Cats, In a kingdom full of pups;
There amongst us;
Was the barking of German Sheppard?
MEOW Cats
And the kittens never whelping;
In a kingdom full of pups;
My, my, my look up, look up;
MEOW Cats
Only this and a spring caterpillar;
Traveling through the spring litter;
Droppings of odor and despair;
What rocks this litter-box?
So toxic
MEOW Cats
Notation of ammonia in the air;
And the parakeets never chatting;
There stepped a young rodent;
Chased got caught and eaten by the cat;
What a death twas, for the young rat;
Imagine this… imagine that;
I heard a deep, deep sighing;
Yum yum ouch!!
Says the mouse rat;
Cats, cats!
MEOW Cats ate all the mice and rats
2/13/20
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2020
He smells wood smoke in the air.
It is autumn, and the smolder
of inert sap fills every nose,
ignites flameless fires in shrinking roots.
Now he buries that nose
in a pile of russet and gold-flecked leaf,
a squirrel scolds him from a high branch.
He’s probably ransacking a winter store,
but he’s a sniff-happy hound
and he does not care.
The woods are falling
under a death-cheating spell,
Spring will awaken them again
with a whelping lick.
He, on the other hand,
will fall sick and die,
this is a future walk I take with him,
an autumnal wake.
If you are me you would never stab a friend in the back; I am what a mother bear is to her
cubs, while they are still whelping; You display me when you stay at a lesser paying job that
gave you a start, when a higher paying job seeks you; I am what your father is to your
mother if he has never cheated on her and has always been there for her; No matter how
much money you try to spend on me, you'll never really be able to buy me; I am harder to
find than a winning lottery ticket that says "I'm a winner, please try me"! Who am I? I am
Loyalty.