poem of the day 03.27.15

poem to my sixteen year old cat

i watch you prance around the apartment

and it’s such sadness

the way you trace the same pattern

behind chairs and stacks of junk left on the floor

to climb on the couch with a thump on the coffee table

to try and lay on me always, no matter the weather

the way your pupils are dilated

blind for almost three years now

with a bum thyroid that makes you nuts

the last two teeth rotting in your mouth

i try to remember the good times

the two decades, seven apartments and three cities

but it’s hard with you meowing in my ear at all hours

warbling in the hallway at five in the morning

while i’m trying to get the poems down

were there really any good times?

we seem more like beings stuck together

than anything that once spoke of love and affection

some nights i try and get you to fall asleep

cooing in the bedroom like you’re a baby

so that i can go and enjoy a book, some drinks

maybe even a movie with the wife

but you always end up back in our space

with the pacing and the meowing and vying for couch room

i look around at what you’ve destroyed

chairs, couches, lampshades and blankets

whole sunday afternoons held captive to your madness

i watch your cat hair roll like tumbleweeds

only an hour after we’ve cleaned

cursing the day we brought you home while cutting your nails

forever cleaning your vomit

or pulling out another lump of shit

that got stuck in your ass

you’ve taught me that while life is short

things can live an awful long time

relationships can fester and wilt but remain

and every day when i come home

i open and front door and hope to find you dead

the two of us finally achieving a workable peace

maybe one day it’ll happen

when is it safe to say goodbye?

but for now i’m putting the keys down

and taking off my coat

while you walk in circles and howl to the gods

the food with your meds in it, uneaten again

there’s a pile of your shit in the hallway

but the new age vet thinks

you could go another six years easy

if only we’d come up there

with five hundred dollars

and get those two rotten teeth pulled

ASAP.