Soul Blues for the Animal Factory

by jotadavida

Posted to Action Poetry on 2002-01-13 12:27:00


Prologue:

Your eyes, your tears
The illusion of fear
Fish, mice, birds
Disappear their last night on earth
Cats and dogs pad off to Animal Heaven
Whole Buddha-fields in every direction
Ancient Fuke ringing his bell
For the animal samsara
Seabirds chase north the spring
Along the coast
In a cave naked bonfire dance
I am the ghost
Singing to Tathagata
Does a dog have the Buddha nature?
Woof!
How Zen is a cat?
No more sad
No more separate
No longer alone
I come to bring you the keys
To Animal Heaven
The keys to
Given
Given again

1st Chorus
Memory dog
Had no control
Mostly banished to the outside
For going on the inside
And he’d bite you, nip you
Humpy, grouchy
Nate couldn’t say the dog’s name
Quite right
Andrew coming out “Mandrew”
Mandrew drawing in Nate
A cockassett mix of a dog and a boy
Meanwhile in that West Texas house
A Turkish Van cat, Sara, staring
Out of one green eye, the other blue
Annie the dog with the supernatural ears
Part Aussie Shepherd, part chow
And frail pale Buster, the budgie old-timer
Wept silent tears for the humans
The household drenched in salt trails
When Cecil and SooZen did what they had to
The only time they ever picked up Andy
Was to put him in a hole in the ground
The only human that dog ever loved
He never did bite
Nate and Andrew, Mandrew and Nate


2nd Chorus
You could teach Jonah any trick except where to pee
In the right places
Yellow mutt Jonah
And there was this tall, swift, slender dog, black and silky
Named Vicky, a saluki
A hug of a dog that smelled like love
She and Mac, half dobie, black markings brown
Half Canaanite, the original aboriginal Israeli
Vicky and Mac, giving panic attacks
To the Chicken dude man
Vicky the brilliant bird catcher
And Mac, ears pinned back to always greet his dear Judih
And in this house there once lived a Meeah and a Matchka
If you can believe it,
Meeah was black Siamese but Matchka was faking it
Silky yes, but really just your basic road cat
And if you ever passed by Judih’s house, yeah, that cat was Matchka

3rd Chorus
Kraljavich Marko Vuk
A grand name for a mixed breed mutt
Like the one that ran the dream streets and shores
Near Cleveland Kuhar
Him the big kid who never grew up
At least the soul in his head stayed so
Junior the guinea pig knew his name
Unlike those three rabbits, always mixed up
Except Bud
Dig this if you can, who it was that brought
The concept of the free embraces
To the metaphysical bomb maker
Two canaries, Franny & Zooey
A bassett-ass-beagle ba-gel named kookie
(Let’s eat!)
And two manic depressive hounds
Dudly and Clarabelle
At night, across the shore, across the lake
You can hear bop magic tinkle and howling
Through windows and open doors
Of the Great Kuhar house

4th Chorus
Other mad scribblers abound in the Deep Ohio night
One went road mad hit the windy city and came back
In the telling of it, he met death upon his return, not his
But his grandfather’s, yet in the telling he carried
Cats in his head, two cats, one jet, jet black
He named after Halle Barry, the other Penelope
Mixed black and white
And a Spaniel named nutmeg
If you see this kid on the side of the road
Give him a lift
Joshgriffin, he’s cool
And he smokes
When he writes

5th Chorus
Iowa dogs
Are special
Two pure bred
Black labs
One five
One two
Banny and Tuesday
Scratching at the door
Wondering if there is
Dog relevance in teaching
Kate her psychology of kids
Squishy red hearts and spider mums
The dogs like to sniff teen-age
Legs because they know when
Iowa teens are in heat
They’re not silent at all
Just ask Kate

6th Chorus
The unfortunate water-changing event
Sent Ophelia straight to the top
For a beta fish, that’s not good
Bonnie and Clyde kicked the bucket, too
Kamikaze fish flying high
Right to the top, they went
Out of the bowl and onto the floor
And Elvis, he’s memory fish four
Still Garibaldi is left, the one they call “fish”
Obviously dogs do better with Jamelah
Unless you’re a furry bastard from hell
Like Satan whose real name is Teddy
And too late to call something else
Part poodle, part cocker spaniel
Part who knows what
There would have been a man named Sam
In Jamelah’s life, he was twelve and she was eight
She named the new cat Sam in crush boy’s honor
She loved his black tipped tail and all the other patches
Like the one between his ears and his right front paw
Then she sneezed and had to give him back, sorry
Sam the man, well, that’s another story

7th Chorus
Terry could never teach Phoebe to leave the chickens alone
She was a mutt mixed in with coyote
You don’t mess with coyotes
You howl with them
In the morning Terry can tell when the mist of the river rises
Canada Geese flying by
While the rest of the world sleeps
He hears the smells and sees the words
Turning into gold
Wrestling with ideas and Mo
Sucking face, those two chasing the neighbors away
Butterfield, the five year old female cat winks
At Dave, a male kitten just ten months shy
Dave winks back, cats always know, they just don’t tell

8th Chorus
Toby trotted rib-starving into town
In another month he was brought round
To better health, everybody fed that dog
At least one two three four times a day
A shepherd from the neck down
Big dog, a mastiff’s noble head
Men couldn’t touch him, some women could
Then one day this woman stopped by Mosa’s place
She fell in love with Toby and took Toby away
Because the county told Mosa dogs shouldn’t
Hang out in front of the town food store
The day that woman came for Toby, her man got bit
Still somehow they shoveled Toby into her car
Off they roared to a big, big farm way far away
Two days later
Toby trotted back into town
For the next three days Toby and the dogcatcher played
Cat and Mouse
Finally this very still trucker
With biscuits in his pockets
Lured Toby home from the store
A little further each day until one day
Toby came all the way home
Toby and the trucker, never separated after that
At home, Toby fell in love with a very small dog
The ugliest dog in the world, the trucker thinks to himself
Fur like straw, but naked with no undercoat
Her ears would fit better on a 150-lb. dog
Sometimes at night she flaps them
Like the flying nun
And flies around the room
One more reason for Toby to hang around
Except two months ago
The trucker lost both Toby and Nancy
Now they are gone
and he’s alone

9th Chorus
Three chickens bok bok bok
Living in the stairs
Clucking at Panta Rei
In the apartment she once rented
These no name German chickens
Like Greek tragedy
Never laid eggs for Panta Rei
She waited for breakfast in vein
These days, Panta Rei entertains
Herself with Martha,
Snail hand puppet

10th Chorus
Little Simon says to Big Mike
Dad? Yes, son
Can I have a dog?
Hmmmm, we’ll see
After a minute Simon thinks of something else
Goes back to singing to the TV
Farts on cue
Big Mike daddy cracks a smile so big
His heart shakes the rafters way up north in the Yukon
In Hawaii, several tsunamis lift surfers thirty feet high
Ride, surfers, ride

11th
There must be a law against dancing with your fuzzball
And singing Tom Jones
But don’t tell that to the HepKat
Poor McKenzie, forced to waltz with two legged creatures
Who sing off-key
What dignity for a British shorthair anyway
Kira the German Shepherd just growls
She hates that pussycat song
Little beta blue, Sid Fishous,
He hates that song, too

12th Chorus
At feeding time in BornSlippy’s house
You’ll see cat feeding at its best
A glow-in-the-dark costume, embroidered sequins
Since Hemingway the Siamese fighter
And Gerardo, the sexy lorikeet seem to respond
To reflected
Groovy surfaces
But don’t ask what is worn to feed the mouse
Poor tormented Hamlet, can you hear him squealing?

13th Chorus
Zigmund changes color like the chameleon season he is
But vagrant cows can’t keep dogs
First one ran away
So the other ran off with it

14th Chorus
If you had a 20-lb Burmese cat
You’d call him Buddha, too
Or maybe Buddy
If you were tPaul

15th Chorus
It’s a good thing for fish that Marty was in the navy
At least he knows the tricks of water
He tends to disappear for days at a time
The dissolving vacation feeders saves them every time
He calls them fish
They call him dad
So did Simon and Garfunkle
Two fire-bellied toads
But they broke up

16th Chorus
Love loves love
And a special girl named Teddie
Love also loves cheese squeezed right from the can
That would be 15-lbs. of love called Ziggy, a Maine Coon
The world-famous phone book licker
And living room layer, four paws up in the air
Or one falling on his belly, doing nothing all day being so much work
Dogs have a thing for Teddie, too
Like apricot-colored Darbi, the bedhog dog
It gets more crowded when chocolate Koko squeezes in
Skye Buddy – Cream colored, with a splotch of Apricot –
Waits for dad to sit on the couch so he can lick the top of Dad’s bald head
Another pastime is biting the vacuum cleaner
And a million memory cats – Samantha, Teddie’s first cat
Who interrupted by showing up during the Wizard of Oz
And then clicked her paws and disappeared a week later
When Teddie was only six
Later, Guido, a tabby orange and white went away with stepdad one
Then came DJ, a 27 pounds of Tom and Siamese,
Restitution for making Teddie move away her second year in high school
DJ meowed only when hungry, a very quiet cat
And one day, the parents of someone Teddie lived with took DJ away
And it was too late to get him back from the shelter
DJ was gone, the best damn cat Teddie ever loved
And don’t forget Stash, a mean cat with a milk mustache
That nobody liked and preferred to scratch everyone in sight
Teddie gave him to an ex-boyfriend’s mom
Stash seemed to like the arrangement, other cats and plenty of room to roam
The streets as he pleased
Still, Teddie loved even the meanest of cats
What more proof do you need that she is special?
Okay, she had these two hamsters Romeo and Julie
Romeo once bit Teddie’s ear and Teddie didn’t know it
Until she went outside and someone noticed
She ran screaming, but later got over it and still liked to stroke their fur
One day, Romeo and Juliet made a break
They disappeared and were later found
In between the cabinets and the fridge
At they died lovers, on the run

17th Chorus
Who wouldn’t love a black and caramel farm cat
Named Pugsly
Tyler Durden does
Just loves that cat

18th Chorus
One day a gentle Tiger kitty named Pepper followed Sylph home
And never left
Home now with Buster a 10 year old Black Lab mixed
With a Rottweiler, now that’s a dog
And also the “dust mop”, Teasha, the Llasa Apso
Chewing everything in sight
But Teasha at least has this goinf for her: she can dance!

19th Chorus
Memory mice – #1 and #2
Molly, a cat
Vicky, the border collie
A black hooded rat named Bon Scott
Who else but a Mudshark would have
A black hooded rat named Bon Scott?

29th Chorus
Levi Asher long ago had a cat
He named it “Happy”
Because he usually was
Just your basic half-orange
Half-white alley cat

21st Chorus
Nobody ever owns a cat, but as close as you can
Violet9ish has one named Snowflake
An albino farm cat with blue eyes
Somewhat of a snob
And there’s a dog in the house, a mutt with bad hair
No neck, short legs, barrel body
Dumb, but you can tell Violet loves that mutt, too

22nd Chorus
Stray cats come and go
From room to room, too
Come and go stray dogs
And other assorted animals
They all have adopted Caliscouri
Animals in charge

23rd Chorus
Surfbum Benz
Hanging on the LA waves
In between tatoos
You can catch her walking her crew
Madame Blavatsky
Sartre
Nietzsche
Camue
Four black as midnight Great Danes
Philosophy
A smile on a dog

24th Chorus
Fade and Shadow
Two cats for TantricSlide
Fade fought back
But another cat bit him first
Gave him leukemie
Won the fight
Lost the war
Died one week later
Shadow is all that remains
All black, mostly sleeps
And sits in a lap

25th Chorus
Imagine Maria
And a cat called Nellie
Pretty brown and black
Didn’t like laps
When Nellie was happy
Especially for the drinking coffee cup
Eagerly awaited the one-time Maria lap
No bites, just a look
Don’t go to work
This keyboard walker
Given away
Maria’s son
Allergic reaction
Maria crying
Lamenting
Near and addressing
The by now empty milk plate
As Nellie was driven away




The Literary Kicks message boards were active from 2001 to 2004.