Waking To the Cat

waking to the cat


waking to the cat in the cold cabin—
it wants a can of tuna
& he wants the goddamned heater
to work his slippers & a shotgun
without a kick—his shoulder
ain’t a young man’s
shoulder anymore
& who the hell
ordered this
fucking
weather
the fields
out there with
their sheets of endless
goddamn snow stubbled
with broken wheat stalks
a reminder of what we took
gouging the earth for another
goddamn dollar & a new wheel
maybe a catapult with hot lead type
boulders so he can fling out insulting
ransom notes some Stonehenge UFO code
to scare the goddamned farmers into leaving
Kansas to the grouse & the buffalo & writers who
know enough to have their houses burned down
when they die: leave nothing to no one save
the sky & the earth & the rivers & creatures
who aren’t stupid enough to shit in their
own goddamn den but that won’t happen for a
century or two so until then
he will just have to wring a sentence from the
mewling of the cat & the ghosts of
the grass & the grumblings of his body:
the Egyptians can go to hell & if the viral word
resists the arrival of the unholy aliens he may
have to mourn that with a shot of bitter absinthe;

for Wm. Burroughs: cold cat piss &
a bottle of pure love


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry