Calico Cats with White gloves

With multi-media fragmentation,
You can place your echoed dreams
On a white-washed canvas.
There, an emotional distance with
An intentionally-limited color palette.

Godfather Toad doffs his dusty old top hat and addresses the council of animals.
They shuffle in their suits and shoes to hear his wisdom-words.

Dressed in Mexican Market dresses with intricate patterns on white cloth, you
Illustrate their world for those on the Outside who cannot understand.

The talking animals with suits and shoes.

Mixed materials flattened on a white plain.
Three dimensional substances illusioned
as two dimensions in the service of an illusion
of depth.

There is sometimes a void of silence that rests between us.
Between our eyes.
Between our ears.
Between our twitching lips.
Between the spaces words would travel through.

Behind your angry words a sordid pain
that will not reveal itself.
A fear, a sadness that falls deep into the canyons of your depth, into
The somber shadows you bare encased in a pretty-fleshed frame.
Behind your eyes the land of the talking animals with big 1930’s eyes.
They have their crazy adventures in the Child-light of some living past.
They cavort in an innocence graced with the wisdom of the human world that encroaches
From Outside.

The lonely silence that washes us in an undertow,
Sweeping us to depths of dream,
Sweeping us in the dark currents
Of the Black Ocean
Beneath the World.

Between our silence a tacit understanding,
Tinged with a fear of
The peeling of protective covering.

Calico Cats with white gloves.
They are spiritually kindred:
Rainbowed patches of smooth soft fur
And cloth shields to protect the probing touch.
White cloth gloves to cover milky hands touched with
liver spots.
Dark eyes staring with youthful love from nests of
lines in once-smooth skin.

You’ve made your way in adulthood,
Pushing on with a child’s ideal
Of living like those with less,
Of slumming it in an affectation
Of Bohemian bravado,
Letting your adventures ride
In a tidal swell of alcohol en excess.
Letting it wash you onto some cold shore
Tinged with the rays of dawn,
Your skull swirling with a whirlpool
Of inner maelstrom.
Letting it drain down to the spongy marrow
Of your bones till
You are dry again.

Traipsing about in a dance of a young girl’s
enthusiasm for a time tinged red with rust.
A Calico Cat with white gloves
To protect fragile fingertips from the bloody
Touch of rusted metal.
And this cat, should she look inward and step through twilight
Meadows to the land of the Talking Animals,
Would find a folk better suited to her far more than suited Outsiders.
1930’s eyes, big and bold and beatific,
Taking in the site of a young girl
Trying to stave off the dusty red of oxidation
That stains her white gloves
And rouges her cheeks
With the wash of ages.

Once,
I gave you a tall glass of water
When you lay on your bed inebriated
And semi-conscious.
Gave you a cold drink from the tap
To re-hydrate your booze-swelled brain
So you might crawl out of bed the next morning
Without a skull crushed in a giant’s iron hand.
You’d only sipped a tenth of the water
And I poured the rest down your kitchen sink,
Knowing it was a thankless task I’d done for you,
Since you’d never remember the next day.

Slights would be remembered.
Mistakes would be remembered.
Misunderstandings remembered.
And grudges would be held with
Fire-forge contempt.
There are spaces between us
Words will not travel through.
Behind your angry words a sordid pain
that will not reveal itself.
Your happy grin to others:
Mixed materials flattened on a white plain.
Three dimensional substances illusioned
as two dimensions in the service of an illusion
of depth.
I have seen the dark deep beneath
And know it from my own experiences
For deeper truth.

Wounded animals know each other by their eyes: big and bold and beatific.
There is a sad love that comes through understanding pain,
But sometimes the most painful thing
Is to forgive.
Between our silence a tacit understanding,
Tinged with a fear of
The peeling off of protective covering.