There is a cat outside my front door.
Sometimes I have a headache and I wonder what it’s from.
It could be a tumor, something I have made
from some crazy cells rioting in my brain.
Sometimes when I’m not at home I wonder
if the cat is still waiting outside my front door.
I bathe in futility. I try to make it fun.
I lose my toothbrush and I don’t even try to find it
because there are so many stores.
I count on this fact.
There’s a square composed of flat polygon tiles.
You’re supposed to make a tiled elephant. It’s classic.
I want to make a cat. I want to pull the cat out of the box
and make sure he’s okay. I don’t want him
to suffer in anyone’s thought game.
Decay, even on the atomic level, is cruelty to animals.
At night I think about my overdeveloped sense of intuition.
It’s not really a sense but it makes me happy.
It allows me to think I know without looking.
Sometimes it occurs to me that one day
all the stores are going to be closed.
One day I’m going to commit some kind of cruelty
and it will probably be toward myself. I might not know it
until I get a headache. I really want the cat to be outside
licking his paws. I want him to drop dead birds on my doorstep.
Someday I’m going to have to get up and turn on the
porch light and check for him. The cat is made of polygons.
When he swishes his tail I hear the ivory tiles clicking.
At night he climbs the tree next to my bedroom window.
I sleep with my back to it.