What the Cats Aren’t Saying

Of all the ones we bind and morph
they are the ones who mind
us having speech the most. Listen how,
when they stare you down, they scrape
off insults with their tongues.
How they choreograph their every stride
to say they know when and how we’ll die,
saving breath for that triumphant cry.

What conniving prima donnas; hairdos
perfect, licked down in mom-spit, rubbing
body smells on our black pants and spewing
fanatic propaganda. Grace they’d trade in half a sec
for a leather jacket and a nickel plated
Colt held in your face. But here in my office
their fury is patted down and hinted at
only when they shudder back

disgusted at fate’s tone of voice,
despite the scads of cat-prayers ever spoken,
because religions like us to see our souls as cats,
leaping from high to higher wire performed
with pluck and in power of the dark.
Imagine how they must feel:
cock-blocked, cheated, mocked by god.
What they’d like to do is cuss up a storm
but they’re held to tact and dangerous body language.

- m.r. kidd

Stray Cat Strut (mp3) Stray Cats

Speak To Me (mp3P Rocco Deluca & The Burden

Numb Hand

It still pinches, points and picks,
but it won’t play what I love.
How I used to baby it, clean it,
marvel at its tricks. Now it’s just
where part of me ends.

I’m going
to slice it off and wrap it
in birthday paper; it’s a pretty gift.
I hope you can use it for something,
a paperweight, indicate directions,
pin it on your blouse,
“I’m With Stupid.”

It can’t feel
what it’s done to me. Dumb lump
didn’t drop a tear as I handed away
all my veined guitars.

In the bathroom
while I cried I thought it hardly
worth my ass as I snotted out
a laugh. I can’t trust a thing like that.

Be careful around it, it is deadly.
Look how it scratched out my heart.
I would give you both
but I still need my other hand
to cover up that hole.

m.r. kidd

Amputee (mp3) Scott Matthew


The Hand That Held Me Down (mp3) Two Gallants (black sessions)

Hand Made In Spain

Her body is smooth as bone
and smells alive, old, strong
rosewood, cedar, ebony and pearl.
Her butt and bout cut, bound
and twisted, beat back
against my three points of touch;
sternum, thighs, both in and out.
Left fingers, one, two, three,
then four, grip her flat black neck
wider than all electrics. My stronger hand
hovers just above her hole.
Index, middle, ring, and thumb
exchange just so much pressure
and release each other to rest
before the next execution.

But sitting with beauty is never easy;
a maze between wanting and hearing
skin rip, sweat run, the muscle twitch.
Though my freakish posture veils
any real violent motion; the hammer
on must be like breathing.
Exercise secures the pattern.
Sharpened tools and sacrifice
to neatness over speed
have made my awkward habits
come alive until I die.

In space kept humid
I tilt, stroke, flail and pluck
a mass of sound from her.
Such work is worth some blood
and little care for more.
For more time, for tone,
I sit alone behind her body
to which my hands are nailed.

- m.r.kidd


Las Abejas mp3 Augustin Barrios


Dark Eyes mp3 Alexander Gluklikh