The thing about cats...

4 am. The bell had been rung twice. He opened the door and fixed her with a look that spelt disapproval, hurt and deceit. But then he threw the door open and let her in, for the same reason that you would let in a stray cat – your heart is melting.

He bends to nuzzle her hair and suddenly sneers into her ear, “ There’s only one thing I can say to you : You’re a dirty, filthy hippy!” But even as he was saying this, he bent further and kissed her anyway.

Beneath the day’s dust, grime and stale make-up, you could still see her smirk of silent self-accomplishment.

Irony

She was exactly his cup of tea.
Unfortunately he wasn't thirsty.

The whispers are as loud as tear drops and as wretched as cries in the night. And they streak down her cheeks and create gradients on her finely made-up face. Hurt can be brutal, but image is something else altogether.

morbid and grotesque
they hover wild around the crime scene
their metallic wings reflecting stars
their ears as shapely as pointed pencils

He held the blade steady as her darkening eyes burnt holes into the back
of his skull. Even under all that pressure he didn't flinch. Then he
swiftly marked her milk pure thigh with a cruel red line. The pain
shoots like burning acid.

The imaginary pain shakes her awake and she's suddenly sitting straight
up, breathing heavily and sweating like it's summer in India. Fingers
levitate to the imaginary wound and the blood abruptly becomes real.

The light is fading and he can’t remember much. He’s forgotten the shine of her hair and the way it feels between his fingers. The way she winces and then smiles at the pain. Her beautiful, bony, bare shoulders under a thin blue blouse. The way her dusty pink lips conceal a smile. He only remembers the words she said as a make-shift Goodbye, “I’ll wait for you, but not in this life…”

Dust swirls at her heels, she walks
Songs stick in her head, she hums
Someday I'll write a book, she think
on the 'Perils of being a Pretty Girl'

Pet Shop

She enters. The dogs begin to bark in unison.

A dust-encrusted radio spits out an old song - Little Richard's band screaming, "Can't help it, the girl can't help it..."

She sidesteps the mangled, the tick-ridden and the runt of the litter. She walks on air as far as her stilettos will allow. Her perfume, as exquisite as it is electric, parts the way.

Walking amongst the most beautiful, she chooses the best and picks him out.

He stands for her.
He sits for her.
Rolls over, plays dead for her.
And then he will stand on his head for her.

She gives the dog a bone.
And then she runs along home.

An as she wanders off aloof,
the store clerk says, "There goes the goose."


Rhyme was never intended.
It walked in uninvited.
To throw a pang of amatuerish my way.

Inevitably the rumour spills forth and shatters; tactlessly, tastelessly, gracelessly. It falls, like a breaking crystal throwing refracted rainbow light; it falls, like the baubles that tumble when a Christmas tree falls; it falls, like a ruined, leaking house of glass. And the stone throwers will be homeless in the streets, but replete with the power of their words. The birds will sing no more for want of a tree, lack of a home. Yet the hornets return to nests once left vacant.

Out-of-Town Strange

As she entered the room, a gruff voice was saying,
"I hate the French! If there's one race I hate, it's the French."

She walked before them; tall, beautiful and confident,
but a voice in her head kept saying,
"How I wish I wasn't French! How I wish I wasn't French!"