Cat Dad
Snipping the clause of sperm gave rebirth to simple thoughts and sentences. Wombs impregnated with selfies…mountain man, fisherman, working man, mama’s boy, man’s man, boy toy, bachelor, shit man, fuck man, goddamn man…narrate voice into a perfect tense between what we will be and what we were. The exclusive sneak peek of time and place into the glitch mill of memory steal those scenes to plot, write, and never act upon. The film cut, the times end, and serendipity endure the infamy of trauma triggers that I squeeze from the inside out. The cat purrs.
Dams on rivers generate controlled environments of uncontrollable passion. Loves of life narrow into instincts. That food, clothing, and shelter lose their composure in the presence of obsession should be read not the night before the quest but amidst the droning organ of love and death. The cat scratches.
The father wants to eat the son and the son wants to eat the father. Somewhere above and beyond like God is the mother. Against their gut feelings, the men develop a bond of love and respect. The mother explores the underworld. Moments are missed…birthdays, graduations, lives, deaths…moments become years, decades, half a life. The father questions the son and the son answers the father. I love you and fuck you. The cat climbs.
I became a father three days after turning the age of nineteen. At different points between his birth and my current age of forty six, I have felt like my son’s father, brother, son, grandpa, and long lost uncle. Maturity fluctuates with economy, intimacy, and health. High levels indicate comfort zones best described as mid. Low levels read horoscopes as they take a shit. The cat perches.
Unplanned intoxications, not children, are to be blamed for my unwanted thoughts, feelings, and things. Never had a mini-van. I drove one, left the e-brake on and burnt it up. I do not like the smell of everybody going somewhere at the same time. If your family was big enough and poor enough, you had to stay home with dad and the dogs while the rest of us went about our pilgrimage. The cat pounces.
Failure in fatherhood is a given but no less fatal than the self inflicted wounds of absent assholes and fallen angels. Taken with too much talk, the prophet clams up. Vengeance becomes sevenfold. I ask myself, do you speak your name before the oracle? The cat naps.
Survival of words depends on the twist of the tongue. Woken to the tones of black and white keys, I left the door locked and walked through the walls to the broken piano. Found myself at the crossroads of sound and sense. Discovered the devil was not all despair and deals. Takes a trickster to trick one. The cat meows.
Met a girl inside the mountain outside my river of never being the same twice. Always imagined but never believe in this salvation of self love. Soon, sooner than soon, her cat met me. He has transformed me into a scratching post. My body is allergic. I want her heart to stop mine. My words are read in a parallel universe. I need to let go of myself, I want to hang on. My son travels the same river I traveled, and arrives at a different time and place.
Introduced myself to a family of trees falling over each other. Deforestation encrypts a circle that can be squared. The cat only looks at me when I need something. Around my childhood home I stared into the evergreens until their shadows were cut down and lifted away. Told the cat to check my head to see where the forest went, told the cat that I love him, told the cat that he’s a pain in my fucking ass, that I want to write something, that I need to write something about my mom dead, something about my dad dead, something about my son alive.
Similarities between the cat and me do not stop at our affection for the fine combs used to massage theoretical dispositions. Egos set aside, we come to the agreement known as the treaty of verisimilitude…belief for the sake of belief. We often find ourselves at the window and wondering of sirens and seagulls and the soothing of shadows. Entertainment of ripples, with and without, how and why, the cinema of mimicry where the mask is worn underneath expression. My son remembers some joy beneath my face…some old daylight.
Catlike qualities include cunning, intimacy, and claws. That purring can precede the flaying of skin leaves the universe vulnerable if not endless with possibility and corruption. Development of danger…hands on the head…hands on the keyboard…hands inside the head. Artistic qualities resist luck, lotteries, and leisure. That writing can abide self-inflicted words. That writing cannot abide the words I want to write for tribute and vengeance. My son tells me a story of a man who became a boy.
Loss of hair does not affect the cat’s preening or my own. Audacity in the twilight begins a phrase that writes recipes for death and denies any measures taken. Naming of the cats after the beasts after the genesis after the trip after the fall after the bread after the wine after the murder and before resurrection is rapture. The cat cleans his asshole. I clean my asshole. Assholes clean their assholes. My son told me no one is above and beyond.
The cat hunts birds and I hunt bird brains. Eyes capture but do not kill. Words surround me but do not always speak. Blue sky, evergreens, and pavement, crows on the eaves, voices melted into the friction, songs sung at the laden, cats pad the curbs, writers ink their fingers, fathers forgive ghosts, sons survive the wolf by becoming the wolf
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