This Morning, the Leaves

This morning I walked on the back porch. New fallen leaves everywhere. I wasn't too scared, actually. Leaves blowing around in the wind. I swatted at them a few times. I ate one. I watched one blow off the balcony. It was beautiful, then I was frightened and -- tail up! -- ran back inside.

Still No Indictments

SHELLY:
Oh, no. She pooped in the corner again.

TONY:
You're kidding.

[Nope. No joke. Take a look for yourself.]

SHELLY:
That same corner. Right next to the plants.

[The apartment's South Forest, you bet.]

TONY:
I don't understand.

SHELLY:
I have to go to work.

TONY:
Her box is clean. I don't get it.

SHELLY:
Why did she have to poop on the floor? Maybe she's sick.

TONY:
Let's keep an eye on her. In case we need to take her to the vet.

[Helter skelter! You just fucking try it. I still have a few hiding places you don't know about.]

SHELLY:
Poor thing. Why does she do it?

TONY:
That's the thing. Her box is clean. The apartment's calm. We haven't gone out of town. It's not raining. Why would she just freak out and shit on the floor?

[For Chrissakes. Look closer. Closer. Are you guys stupid?]

SHELLY:
All we can do is keep checking on her. I hope she's not sick.

TONY:
[Gets toilet paper, Murphy's Oil Soap, paper towels.]

Let's hope not. I just don't understand it.

[Look closely, fool! Can't you see the turds are piled in a pyramid? Christ, Tony, you are really fucking dumb. Where else have you seen a pyramid? Lemme give you hint. Maybe Abu Ghraib? You better not move. If you pick up my turds, you'll be electrocuted.]

All the birds came back. I don't understand. Is that a goldfish under the rug? Rub the copper coffee table, twice the poultry content. Go to sleep till the indictments are announced.

This Morning

I ate all the birds in the world -- pigeons, eagles, ovenbirds, sparrows, barn owls, yellowhammers, goldfinches, greenfinches, orioles, robins, quail, kingfishers, all of them, and a dragonfly that tried to buzz past my head. I made each one call me Jesus Christ, then I swallowed.

As for Tom DeLay

Finally, the phrase "mug shot" appears in the same sentence as the name "Tom DeLay."



As Marx says in Das Kapital, "avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth." I dreamed about spiders last night.

My Apartment

Catherine Deneuve rubs her cheek against the plants in the south forest of the apartment. Angela Davis stares out the window onto Greenview Avenue. Nina Hagen sleeps in the reading chair in the spare room. Emma Goldman watches the news in the spare room with Tony and Shelly. Edna St. Vincent Millay sleeps in the HP Laser Jet Box. Squeaky Fromme watches the squirrel family lay out a bed of leaves in the tree outside the window in the spare room. Wendy O. Williams rests her front haunches on the red catnip mouse called Karl Rove. Gertrude Stein sleeps in the magazine box in the bedroom.

1. Mouse
2. White moth
3. Centipede
4. Pigeon
5. Squirrel
6. Ant
7. Milk bottle cap ring
8. Cockroach
9. Ladybug
10. Spider
11. Bumblebee
12. Dental floss
13. Cicada

Proof that hypnotism doesn't work.

They feed me the same time every day: as soon as they wake. They know the drill. No matter how bleary they might be, the food and water must appear in my bowls at daybreak.

But today. They drank coffee, sitting on the couch. What the hell. Forgot to feed me. Forgot to feed me.

I sat on the living room carpet, facing them in their self-absorbed conversational couch reverie. I rested my front haunches on Karl Rove, my captured catnip mouse (the red one).

I stared at Shelly, probed the deep recesses of her eyes. Hey, you forgot to feed me. Visualized, for her, food pellets dropping into my dish from the bag they keep in the cupboard. Hey, you forgot. Oh my fucking God, at least turn on the bathtub spigot.

I drank deeply from the bathtub spigot waterfall. I fell asleep in the spare room, wary of the squirrel family in the tree outside the window.

I dreamed I got on my hind legs at the back screen door and Shelly let me out. And then, man, I really scolded those squirrels. I said if I saw them again, I'll make them fall from the trees, bleeding, like the autumn leaves.

OK, well, leaves don't bleed. But if they could, I'd chase them, too.