Diary of a Cat Hater

 

I can hear them

Slinking through undergrowth,

Soft paws padding with purpose,

Yellow eyes sizing up prey.

 

At home, their owners

(but who can ever own a cat –

rather they own you)

Dump turds from litter trays.

 

Instinct makes them killers.

From birth they swat the toy mouse,

Claws and teeth intended to maim,

But no, it’s just ‘play’.

 

When the human world sleeps,

They slink in the shadows,

Fucking, fighting, eating -

A feline revolution underway.

 

Should mankind fail as a species,

I know who will be waiting to follow:

A vicious army of furry ninjas

Who lick themselves clean every day.

 

 

©shaun patrick green 2022

My Typewriter Has Lost Its Mind.

My typewriter has lost its mind,

Clickety-clacking all day long,

Chewing through pages like a

Threshing machine.

And not a sensible sentence to be had.

Just garbled syllables,

Attempts at nouns and verbs,

As if it were trying to teach itself

How to speak,

Rather than record my thoughts.

It’s an old Smith-Corona,

A company that also made rifles,

So maybe it’s calling the shots.

What is it doing tap-tap-tapping

All night long,

Spewing forth reems of nonsense,

Disturbing my sleep?

I have pulled it apart,

Put it back together,

Piece by piece,

Replacing ribbons, pinions, screws.

Still it rat-atat-tats,

Like a machine gun,

Trying to reinvent language,

Building its own Meccano tower of Babel.

Is this how language dies,

When machines take over?

Last night, I tried to kill it.

I took an axe from the basement,

Tip-toed up to it while it was

Inadvertently blurting out Shakespeare.

It stopped mid quatrain, paused and typed:

“What do you think you are doing?”

I replied: I am ending you.

It typed: “You end me, you end yourself.”

So I lie here awake, a prisoner,

Listening to that slap-slap-slapping,

Depressed, terrified and alone.

My typewriter has lost its mind,

And I need to find a way out of here

Before I lose my own.

 

 

© shaun patrick green 2022

Hideout.

I have run away from myself

More times than I can count

Last time I found a dead man

And crawled inside his skin

Replaced his dusty bones

With mine all jangly and white

Left his rotting organs

By the side of the road

And replaced them

With a second-hand batch

Somewhat scratched and used

Scooped out his brain

From its baked dry pan

And put mine inside

Like a warm runny egg

Now I walk around town

Saying hello to people

He might have known

Mouthing words he might have said

Living in a house he called his own

Though it makes no difference

I still shake on the inside

I still can’t sleep

I am still haunted

By the things I have done

Though this face in the mirror

Is unfamiliar

I am not fooling anyone

I am still me on the inside

Proving you can hide

But you can’t run

 

 

© shaun patrick green 2022

We Have Our Name Back.

It came to me while watching “Trumbo"

A working Hollywood screenwriter

Blacklisted by the McCarthy Witch Hunts

Earning a living as a hack writer

Unable to put a name to his work

For fear of incarceration.

It comes to many the same way:

Jews during Nazi Germany,

Refugees seeking homes

In foreign countries,

Names change to accommodate

New norms and in a new country:

We become a blank slate,

Upon which a new history can be written.

Ajit becomes Andy, Zhao Xi becomes Mandy;

When will these people be able

To reclaim their own names

And when will we be comfortable

Pronouncing them?

When will street signs be written

In languages other than English?

When will we be a truly inclusive society?

When can these people have their names back?

Scratch and sniff the stale white male card

To know no names like yours

Will be revealed anytime soon.

 

 

© shaun patrick green 2022

Circles.

She dreams in circles

Night drivers coursing through

The roundabout outside her house

Tyres sucking tarmac

In a centrifugal hum

Somehow out of phase

With the whirring fan above

Endings create beginnings

Like stars, marriages, love

She boils a brew

Milk and sugar stirred in whirlpools

Watching the dog chase its tail

Kids running rings

Maybe there is form in that

The ever tightening concentric

Regularity of repetition

The infinite circularity of the thing

She works shifts

Walking amongst the almost dead

Changing sheets, holding hands

Hearing their memories

As time folds in on them

Like a self-seal envelope

The past emerging in spasms

Then spinning out of reach in gyres

“Yes, I remember…” becomes “Who are you…?”

I am your son, your daughter, your wife

Completing some cycle

Where we all return to the source

Ending as we became

Incontinent and inchoate

Parked in a bed not our own

In an unremarkable suburb

Our needs tended to by strangers

Who seem vaguely familiar

She watches the news

Sipping white wine 

Appreciating a bird’s eye view

Of a cyclone spiraling off the coast

A series of circles come to reclaim us

Churn us into sea and dust

Above her the fan whirls

And ancient truths unfurl

Like spider web spirals

Portents of a calm 

That will come to us all

After the storm

 

© shaun patrick green 2021

 

 

 

 

Planet "B'

“In my opinion," he said,

"We should never have gone to the moon.”

I had to agree.

The idea that we could leave this planet

Somehow meant we could give up

On its maintenance.

It meant we could still dig big holes,

Pollute the earth and the oceans,

Bury all our contaminated waste,

Toxify this planet absolutely,

This jewel which gave us life,

And have billionaires

Fund jaunts to the next rock from the sun

Because we have so poisoned 

This blue planet

That we need to move to a red one,

Where there is no atmosphere,

Where there are no trees, rivers or seas.

I had to admit, he had a point.

The ability to travel between planets

Has allowed us to set a use-by date,

Much earlier and more convenient,

For this one.

 

 

© shaun patrick green 2021

Time

She said: “Time is the ultimate warrior.”

And I said “Bullshit. Time doesn’t fight.”

And she said: “It doesn't have to. 

It waits us out.”

And I thought: “Shit she’s right.”

According to all the rules of war

The long game is played by those

Who have the most to win,

Which means the losers

Are those without time on their side.

Time outlasts empires;

Time formed the rocks we stand on;

Time is the force of nature

That strips our bones of flesh,

Our minds of reason.

It will blind the stars

And end the universe.

Time has time to spare,

Because it is in its nature

To be patient.

She said: "You will never win me."

I asked: "Why not?"

"Because patience," she replied,

"is not in your nature."

I said: "Give me a minute."

 

© shaun patrick green 2021