The Saturday Cat Council

 The Saturday Cat Council

There is a village, tucked out of sight,
Where cool cats gather every Saturday night.
At dusk, they assemble with regal flair,
To gossip and plot with a judgmental stare.

Wise cats.
Fat cats.
Chatty cats.
Brat cats.
Purring cats.
Trilling cats.
Murmuring, mewing, and "Feed me!" cats.

Their fearless leader? Felis catus, of course—
Tiny in size yet commanding the force.
If one gives a slow blink, don't panic or hiss;
Congratulations—you've received a cat kiss.

But don't get too smug. Don't get too bold.
Their trust has a warranty of twelve seconds, I'm told.
One mighty MEOW! and you'll instantly see
They've promoted themselves to your royalty.

Descended from Felidae, Order Carnivora,
Masters of zoomies, chaos, and flora.
With night vision sharp and hearing supreme,
They detect snack wrappers for miles, it would seem.

Their noses are flawless, their instincts refined;
Your hidden tuna? Already they'll find.
They speak in a language no human can crack—
Part Shakespeare, part opera, part demanding a snack.

Some scholars insist, with remarkable passion,
Their dialect comes from Old High Valyrian.
Sadly, the translators all disappeared...
Probably because they ignored a cat and got weird.

And if, late at night, in a shadowy alley,
A chorus of growls begins to rally—
With snarls and spits and chattering teeth...

Do not run,

 or they'll chase.

Walk backward slowly with dignity intact,
Then toss them a treat as a diplomatic act.

For every cat knows, beyond all debate,
The universe spins because they are great.
You're not their owner—you never were that.
You were merely employed...by a high-born cat.

Nothing is Wasted

 Nothing Is Wasted

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have.”
—Henry James

The first sentence
is a worn trail marker,
leaning where two paths divide.
I follow it.

Miles later,
it leads me across a stream
inside a story
I didn't know I was walking.

A trail map fades.
Rain freckles its pages.
A route I crossed out
waits beneath the pencil's ghost,
still pointing.

Nothing is wasted.

The dust of the trail
settles into my boots
with yesterday's miles.

The ridge ahead
imagines tomorrow's weather.
Both leave a mark
no stream of consciousness can fully wash away.

Inside the data centers,
machines map every switchback
without ever feeling thin air,
without the weight
of a tired friend
leaning on your shoulder.

Meanwhile,
we climb one more rise
though daylight is thinning.

The summit is still ahead—
a small ambition
lifting its face
against a crag of silence.

Still,
the peak borrows our footsteps
to reveal its paths.

The trails we abandoned,
the wrong turn,
the loose stone,
the single weary step,
becomes the way forward.

We wander.
We blister.
We wait for one another,

exploring new twists and turns

in our boundless quest

to rewrite the world.

 

 

Thinking Beyond the Trope

 Thinking Beyond the Trope

He was a legend in his own mind.

She was the damsel in distress.

When they met, even the lesser gods exchanged weary glances.

Zeus, meanwhile, was having the time of his immortal life.

The getaway car wouldn't start.

In fact, it wouldn't start for almost forty years.

Why does that sort of thing happen?

Destiny?

Nerves?

It can be nerve-racking, after all, sitting in a getaway car, waiting for bank robbers to come bursting out of a building naked and triumphant after the storm.

That had been the plan.

They were supposed to change clothes at the bar down the street—the one where clothing was optional, and questions were discouraged.

Not that the car was going anywhere.

It sat stubbornly at the curb, contemplating eternity.

The bar was close enough to see.

The night was young.

And it was 11:00  on a Saturday. 

The Green Jungle

 The Green Jungle

The green jungle
outside my window
conceals mysteries—

what my neighbor is up to,
where the cats disappear,
what stirs beneath the leaves.

Hell, that jungle is thick,
so thick I think of cutting it down.

Mostly because it shelters snakes
and other creatures,
hiding in its tangled shadows.

Critters like Tiki,
and maybe even
a time machine.

Grandma smiles at me
from the windowsill,
as if she can read my thoughts.

But she is a distant memory now,
a voice from a vanished world.

She lived through World War II
in a shattered Germany,
with five children to feed.

Fleeing from one relative's house
to another in the middle of the night,
while bombs fell from the sky,
leaving only moments to escape.

One of those children
was my mother.

In 1945 she was nine years old.

Most of what they endured
remains hidden inside her pretty head,
buried beneath the years.

Perhaps that is one of God's graces—
That memory spared her
some of the horror.

But her body remembers.

It remembers hunger.
It remembers scarcity.
It remembers not knowing
who was friend or foe.

Before the victors divided the country,
before borders hardened
between East and West,
my mother escaped westward.

She was one of the lucky ones.

And as I stare into the jungle
outside my window,
I wonder what else survives unseen—

the snakes,
the cats,
the forgotten stories,

and the roots of old fears
still growing beneath the surface,
hidden like a forest
too dense to enter.

The White Rain

 The White Rain

 

The summer garden of us was lush,
until the frost bit deep.
We wake to a landscape
turned suddenly stark,
snapping the roots.
The clock fractures open,
and we let the debris scatter.
It is an ending, quiet as ash,
and the air settles still.

I refuse to drown the floor
in the white rain of what is spilt.
I am no showy Willow,
bending my spine in a theatrical weep,
Draping long green sleeves
to court the indifferent earth,
Flirting with the passing wind,
putting on a tragedy
for God knows who.

Yesterday’s downpour
is already a ghost on my skin,
long evaporated.
I am only a silhouette
leaning over the well of sweet, toxic memory,
Straining to see the reflection
of why I ever built the bridge at all,
As if a heart ever required
a logical blueprint to ruin itself.

You asked if the world harbored
a quiet malice against my name.
The shadows are too shallow
to hold a grudge that heavy, Marty—
There is not enough warmth
left in the heart to care.

 

I Rang the Bell, Didn't I?

 I Rang the Bell, Didn't I?

The joke was stupid,
but the punchline hit like lightning
through a church steeple.

Better than Viagra.
Better than anything
sold behind a pharmacy counter
or whispered across a parking lot at midnight.

For one glorious second,
the universe coughed up a win.

Now every day arrives wearing yesterday's clothes.

The clocks run backward.
The headlines molt and grow the same diseased feathers.
We're trapped in a carnival ride
operated by drunk historians.

Who's on first?
What's on third?
Who burned down the rulebook?
Who replaced it with a coloring book and a flamethrower?

The air tastes like pennies,
old grievances,
and freshly laundered lies.

Racism hangs over everything
like a dead possum in the attic—
bloated,
stinking,

impossible to ignore.

I'd just like to breathe
without inhaling someone else's delusion.

I want the tirade to end.
I want the fever to break.
I want normal to stumble back through the door
looking rough,
missing a shoe,
but alive.

Instead, we're all waiting for Season Three.

Not a polite season.
Not a prestige-drama season.

House of the Dragon season.

Dragon fire turning tyrants into barbecue.

Crowns melting into puddles.
Egos scattered across the countryside
like loose teeth after a bar fight.

Heads roasted.
Limbs crushed.
Entrails decorating the landscape
with all the subtlety of modern politics.

Let the whole miserable circus
reach its final act.

Then sweep up the ashes.

Strike up the band.

And for the love of God,

let me dance.

The "M" stands for Mouth-breathing

 The "M" stands for Mouth-breathing

The "F" stands for Fake.

MF.

A fitting title for a man who thinks a Peace Prize should be awarded for collecting dictators like baseball cards.

You think Putin is your friend?

Putin doesn't have friends. He has assets, obstacles, and future obituaries.

To him, you're that mosquito trapped inside the bedroom at 2 a.m.—loud, irritating, and one slap away from becoming a stain on the wall.

And then there's China.

Not because they admire you.

Because somewhere, a team of scientists is desperate to discover how a brain can be simultaneously overused and underdeveloped.

You are living proof that confidence can survive without evidence.

It's remarkable.

Engineers study structural failures.

Economists study market failures.

Historians now have you.

A one-man case study in how ego can achieve escape velocity while intelligence remains firmly grounded.

You wanted to make history.

Congratulations.

You did.

Just not in the chapter you were hoping for.

You're filed somewhere between "avoidable mistakes" and "what were they thinking?"

Future generations won't ask how you changed the world.

They'll ask how the world let you keep trying.

That's your legacy.

Not a Peace Prize.

A cautionary tale.