Wess “Mongo” Jolley Poet, and Performance Poetry Promoter    The Raw Heart of Endless Fascination

Return to Index

Mice, Cat Litter, Bird Feathers

It was the single eyebrow and your painful limp in March snow It was your hungry smell the way you sweated blood and cried bitter wine into the spring fresh air It was the broken fingernail the tangled hair the old dirt between your toes It was the parts you shed like a leper in a footrace frozen bits floating down the river of our love I adored the fact that you were not whole or clean or happy No one else could be so content in our smoldering bed of lies or so consumed by abstract hate for supermodels full of teeth But it was me you chose in your dope filled haze me you pulled into your dumpster amid the dead roses and shiny sour cat litter And I was content to keep you there content to help dismember you remember you September you all through Fall I would have been with you to the end until there was nothing left of you to love but the tongue of your brilliant stolen loafers But you couldn't wait couldn't keep it together had to fly into pieces of abstract street music without words without words out with the words They're out you're gone and I wait and watch for planes to fly over our alley And the rats bring me dead birds every spring long flights for nothing Their wing muscles are strong and it takes hours to stack their feathers neatly My eyebrows have grown together now and I only remember every other syllable of every other word you used to use I combine them in a greasy soup can to make new versions of you but none of them seem right I guess you are made of mice old cat litter new bird feathers and broken vowels I'll probably leave our alley soon leave the pigeons and the cats cross the gum spotted concrete brave the asphalt and the taxis full of wolves If I do I'll check my eyes at the corner and look for dirt between my toes I'll scrape it away and keep it with the bird feathers I still refuse to let go I'll skip along the center line force a limp and twirl my hair until this street collapses in laugher And as the city spins to a stop I'll catch enough consonants floating on the breeze to write your name in flame across that tiny snatch of sky that I keep in my tattered coat pocket

These works are licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Licenses.