How Unfortunate

Soft beauty arises in memory,
Singing a dusklit destiny,
Saying "Bring me a world where the free are free."
I never believed in either of us,

How unfortunate,
How unfortunate.

And into the emptiness of infinite blue,
I saw the lamplit shining new
Upon the world that I have passed through,
Ashamedly, I never believed in me nor you.

Tell me what you know,
I am faithless,
But I am not afraid.
I am alone,
But I know
When the world falls down
Around my knees
I have you,
And you will set me free.

Rapunzel never let go of her dreams,
And though you knew I couldn't bring
It all to the table,
You loved me anyway.

All I can ask is the question, "Why?"
All we can know are our dreams and lies,
And even those may prove to divide
Ourselves from ourselves and flesh from bone.

How unfortunate,
How unfortunate.

Because we're all stuck outside each other's heads,
I figure we're lost sometime in bed,
Where even laughing eyes sometimes regret
Everytime we ever cried or bled.

Tell me,
Tell me what you know.

I am faithless,
But I am not afraid.
I am alone,
But I know
When the world falls down
Around my knees
I have you,
And you will set me free.

Even though I never believed...

How unfortunate,
How unfortunate.

I am faithless,
But I am not afraid.
I am alone,
But I know
You will set me free.

I Am A Real Woman

People pass by on the street in silence,
They're four-legged, two-legged, winged.
They don't pay a whit to the turbulence,
They're clothed, furred, and ringed.

Half of these people won't recognise,
Hurt for, hate for
The bombardment of advertisements and otherwise
Made into an object day by day.

Advertisers, go away!

I am a real woman already,
I don't need your validation,
Your attempts to consolidate my beauty are useless,
I don't believe in your desecretion.

I am a real woman already,
I don't need your taut shiny abs,
I am a real woman already,
And I don't need your stupid ads.

People pass by on the street in silence,
They're four-legged, two-legged, winged.
They don't pay a whit to the turbulence,
They're clothed, furred, and ringed.

Half of these people won't realise
The damage of corporate beauty until it's too late,
They won't be disenfranchised,
By the industry that they can't love or hate.

I am a real woman already,
I don't need your validation,
Your attempts to consolidate my beauty are useless,
I don't believe in your desecretion.

I am a real woman already,
I don't need your taut shiny abs,
I am a real woman already,
And I don't need your stupid ads.

1, 2, Advertisers, go-away!
1, 2, Pornographers, go-away!
1, 2, Magazines, go-away!
Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!
That's it!

I am a real woman already,
I don't need your validation,
Your attempts to consolidate my beauty are useless,
I don't believe in your desecretion.

I am a real woman already,
I don't need your taut shiny abs,
I am a real woman already,
And I don't need your stupid ads.

Please Stop That!

Screaming begins at 10 at night,
It's time for a fight again.
But all of these fights are so one-sided,
She won't fight back,
And she can't.
Not against you.

A glass is thrown;
It breaks against the wall
Into a million glittering pieces
That lay in hurtful patterns
Across the floor.
I can't help my fear;
I crawl behind the couch
And wait.

Tension thrills the air
So that if I didn't know better,
I swear that lightning would come
Striking down out of nowhere,
From the clouds of anguish
That lay thick and heavy in the air.

Footsteps tromble into the room,
Making everything around shiver
In a sympathetic dance of fear.
With a yell,
You see me...
And your foot comes flying out.

I yelp, whimper, back away,
Ears: Down.
Tail: Down.
Total submission.
Isn't that what you want?

It's not enough,
And you strike again,
A thousand lights breaking in my eyes
As though fireworks had been set off
To celebrate my pain.

Your fist goes up,
And something in it hits the light,
And gleams for a moment,
Mesmirising,
Until it hits my side
And explodes in a flurry of red.

And again.
Again.
Again.

Whimpering,
I close my eyes.
Please stop that!
I love you...

A Game Of Chase

Sweet green fingers
Grasp the ropes of darker emerald,
And part them
So that my piscine companions
May flit through them
In a game of chase.

Flight of the Mink

Life behind silvery stripes colours my world;
They are embedded,
Not in the ground -
The fabled cool wet earth -
But in my still-beating heart,
Given to me with a promise
That no one could cage it.
And so they can't -
I am still free in my head.

Around and around and around again;
No, I think it will never end
Until the lights begin to dim
And I sleep once more.
Dreams assauge the chill of monotony,
A cold wire cage and the whirr of electronics
Seething a soft drone in the silence of my life;
No one speaks here.
Not even me.

Here's a minute of mental clarity;
Among the days and nights of solitude,
One must take them when one can.
I run my tongue over the soft brown fur
That constitutes my body;
My truest cage,
And one that will never leave me
Until he comes to rip it away.
If I had no body,
I think I could run free in the air
That smells so enticing
From the prison of someone unconvicted of a crime.

And in the dimmer light of one night,
The door opens,
And I see the mythical moon for the first time.
Silhouettes move through the entrance
But there is more than one this time;
Death works solo only,
Taking prisoners one by one from their cells
And stripping their skin away
To lay bare their only sin -
The greatest one of all -
To be born with what others want.

Strange black-furred hands unlock my cage door
And though I try to stay away,
They wrap around me
And carry me gently away to the light of the moon
To set me down
Where I feel for the first time
Soft wet earth and grass,
And taste the dish that every person hungers for -
Freedom!

Without looking back,
I run as far and fast as I can...

A Second Letter To Kay

I am reaching
Across land and lakes
Spattered with the remaining starlight,
What has not fled
From the painted eyes of dawn
Batting them carelessly away
Like suitors
Unworthy of her love.

In this brilliant light I will see you;
Soft, delicate, beautiful, small,
A bird come out of the showers of life,
Who will see the warmth in my breast
And fly to me,
Huddling under my strong arm
As if there was nothing else you wanted.

Is there?
I will find it
And give it to you as a gift
For your present to me,
Shimmering brightly in the heat
Of countless deserts
And, not unsurprisingly, oceans,
And until then
I will listen
To the nightengale singing in the distance.

Two White Mice

Within the walls that have become my home -
Not too big a change
From the walls that were my birthplace -
I count my luck
And ration it out to myself
Day by day by day,
So that I will never run out.

Sterility becomes these men
In their long white pelts
That are hairless and stiff;
They are nothing if not clean -
And we are nothing to them
But a project
And a profit.
I understand why I am here
More than you think.

Days pass but we are still here -
Together.
A blessing will never be recognised
Until it is taken away,
And I have recognised
The power over my heart
That my companions have
When I am alone.

When the lights that pass for suns here
Finally dim and then darken completely,
We are still together -
Two white mice
Curled up in a cage,
Taking all the comfort in the world
From the smell of each other's fur.

Phoenix

Somewhere in between starlit epiphanies,
Compassion swirls in a lazy circle,
And phoenix rabbits light up my dreams,
Where they form iridescent bubbles,

They hop away to the moonbright sea,
Alluding to peace found between,
And the cessation of strategies,
To hurt, to harm, to kill.

Like a bonfire in the attic,
Like a key in the ignition,
Like a burning-eyed fanatic,
I see you heal.

Like you're rising from the ashes,
Like you're calling for a friend,
Like you're smiling out from your lashes,
You become whole again.

Once I dreamed of the joy of flight,
Sheer absolution without contention,
Under the feathers of stars at night,
Fire trailing behind me.

Teach me the beautiful symphony
That you hear without your ears,
Show me how to stop bickering
And lay at rest, with hope.

Like a bonfire in the attic,
Like a key in the ignition,
Like a burning-eyed fanatic,
I see you heal.

Like you're rising from the ashes,
Like you're calling for a friend,
Like you're smiling out from your lashes,
You are whole again.

I have so much to learn
From the smallest of creatures,
As the saying goes, once burned
Twice shy, isn't that right?

Beautiful creatures make whorls in my dreams,
Soothing me away from the painful world,
To a place where phoenix bunnies show me epiphanies.

The Henhouse

My eyes, burning with ammonia
Have seen things that my sisters have not;
A vast blue expanse,
Godlike in my mind -
The sky.
Is it a crime to want such a pleasure again?

Days come and days go -
I don't know what they are anymore.
The light is constant,
Thrumming above from sterile lines,
And I can't see outside
To distinguish day from night.

These wings that have few feathers now,
Shuffled, scuffed and rubbed,
Edge out wistfully -
I have heard of flying,
But even stretching is unknown
To these beaten limbs.

A fight breaks out again -
Caged together with no space to roam,
There is nothing to do but fight.
I wish sometimes
That we could be like my nestmates were,
Preening each other
As friends, not rivals
In this hell they call a life.

And I wonder,
Why are we here?
Why us?
What have we done?
When will we die?
There is no hope of escape now.

I close my eyes away from the burn
And imagine once again
The sky.

A Letter To Kay

When the moon was still being imagined
Out of the clouds left behind
By kindness and delinquency,
I promised you.
And between the changing of worlds
Caught in chaos and the throes
Of greedier humans than I,
I believed in you.
For all the world to know
The cynical musings of one
That long ago lost the curiosity
That comes from the clashing
Of incandescent relief
And the fire of agate,
I would give this to you.
Just as I have shouted from the rooftop
Of humble homes belied
By the wilderness of flowers
Growing with the helping hand of Chaos,
I give you all I truly own -
Myself.

This Beauty Has Been Ripped Away

Pines become intimate with scurrilous skies,
Raking malachite claws through timid sands,
Where one is only one and one with the lands
Means compassion, not excuses...
The ultimatum: "We can do what we want."

Ignorance creates a kaleidoscope,
Revolving in the suspension of belief -
Casting not miasmas to the thief,
But to her on the opposite end
Where blood does not seem normal...
And where the law of Death does not have to be enforced.

Brown eyes blink back from greenery bright,
Stillness before trust; let's see what you're made of.
He will not know the perfection of love
That can be granted by laying down a gun.
These kind brown eyes that are wiser than yours
Become empty darkness spinning through eternity.

With the pull of a trigger, this beauty is gone.
Triumph forgets to give way into regret;
Sorrow at pain has long been drained from the regent
Not of the forests but of technology;
Something that nature will someday overcome,
But for now, this beauty is gone...

The Great Deep Black

From far away lands
You can hear the calls of shorebirds,
Stringing themselves over the great deep black
And crying for the gods to come out and play.
Do they, I wonder?
And these gods that speak to birds
And whisper into the ears of the dying
To have faith in the painlessness of sleep
Must have play to keep themselves sane.
The rolling of the waves can only do so much -
Lull one to sleep, perhaps,
But one must be careful not to wade too far in.
For in the great deep black there is a consciousness
Born of lost souls -
And wishes -
And the unwanted -
And one must believe that these souls too want to play
Like their sisters above the waves,
Floating on a breeze,
Past the time when night succumbs
To the lazy sexuality of dawn,
Who smiles
As the moon rushes past with a blush.

Freedom!

Lightning lies screaming across wild skies,
Admonishing priests and men made of lies,
Blinding the innocent and curious eyes
That lie in wait for their rights,

Ecstatic abandon releases the hate
Born of shareholders and men who commiserate
To make machines of our sisters and condemn them to late
Progress, if they get any at all,

In between corpses I think I see
The coming of an epiphany!
And we must wage this war on society
To let the animals free!

Freedom!
The light at last!
The sunshine away from a cold cage and stall,
Slowly but surely knocking down the walls...

A bird from the trees is soon struck down
By the hand of a butcher and the vote of a town
To feed on the senseless mass slaughter abound
Why care for life when yours is the power?

And so we see men forming baseless lies
To keep their power and lengthen their ties
To the innocents' fear and the graceless flies
Feeding on death, death of the weak

The weak! The loving! The caring! The kind!
How cruel is the world that perpetuates lies?
"They cannot reason, they cannot speak"
They cannot protest the harm of the meek,

In between corpses I think I see
The coming of an epiphany!
And we must wage this war on society
To let the animals free!

Freedom!
The light at last!
The sunshine away from a cold cage and stall,
Slowly but surely knocking down the walls...

These men cannot see what should be their pride,
In the care that they would in these animals find,
And so slaughter relentless we do not mind,
We can't find enough excuses...

Stream of Consciousness from a Lab Rat

I am just one rat,
Done harm to no one,
And wouldn't if I could.
Bars and steel?
Welcome to my life.

Men in white coats alarming,
Set my world on fire,
Tortures ever-changing,
Inside fear is raging,
But I don't know why.

Scientific probing,
It's not your problem
Making me insane,
A little crazy in the brain,
But that's okay.
I'm okay, I'm alive.
And one day
Maybe I'll wake up to find
That this was just a nightmare.

I don't believe in kindness.
It's just a myth that I heard,
I was told by my mother,
But she was wrong, I guess
I didn't know her for very long.

They're coming again.
I am just one rat...

Cats in the Snow

Mittens made the winter melt,
It never suspected such a soft magic.
But while the moon slept,
Armies of imprints assembled around my doorstep.
I ushered them in with promises of warm soymilk,
And perhaps a scratch or two
Behind the most tender of places,
Well-protected by thread upon thread,
Grown from a living root
With a base of quiet contemplation,
Well-mixed with the knowledge that only our friends can have.

The soft padding of furred feet on the snow
Slowly marched into my dreams,
And without too much ado,
Curled up against my back and slid off
Into a well-earned,
Well-deserved sleep.