Blessed by the cat

 I held the animal up
spring was full aggressive
people had taken to leisurely afternoons
picnics at those rustic outdoor tables

They clapped and cheered 
As I showed the animal around
It was just yellowish ginger cat
Yet the people loved it

From under shade of evergreens
As the hardwoods still had holes in their canopies
More familes were arriving and dews were drying up
I held up the cat toward the newcomers they beamed

The cat's back legs and front legs extended from lack of support
It's green eyes completely neutral
No sign of struggle just a strange indifference on the cat
This the crowds appreciated even more

Each table impatient to have the cat held up to them
Their halos and auras and expensive summer clothes
inviting and comemorating the strange random event
Each family something whole and vigorous

They squander our treasure

 I walked among tall men
feeling short and inadequate
Yet feeling comfort in my shortness
For the burden went to the biggest

The smallest ignored
Merely using their shadows to escape sun
Or the form of them a wall against weather
humble simple and contented with small

But I was suddenly commanded to walk against them
Weak and unstrategied, fearful and wanting, losing
They baited and intimidated who was I to affront them
My answer came in being thrown to the ground

To feeling their knuckles on my brow
coughing up and stinging from within and without
For they no longer guard our treasure
They squander it all

And on their weary path they pollute and corrupt 
every following generation

The rains will raise the river

 Our lodging is not fifty meters from the river
It keeps raining, I sleep not, taking pains
I rummage for tools as water nears the front door
I will dig a trench I say but the water will not flow away

I will dig you hear but the water will not disappear
I see it now in fright in the dim light clay stained soup like
puddling an inch or more from the glass sliding door
The river is loud no doubt swelling soon to flood us out

I look over at you sleeping as if the world will keep keeping
Wake! Realize! The banks will be burst as sure as the sun will rise
We will be inundated, fated to drown, evacuating to late
Make haste, take suitcases, for this place will be laid to waste

Action is survival
death complacency

One's divine vanity

So busy showing off
One may not see one's own vanity
so busy comparing
Multitudes on the bottom rung
Overlooked badly faring

Vanity soaked in new colors
One hopes will represent the official
That will have honour and place
One's own recognition initially
A shield against conceivable disgrace

That one's own ritual be ordained by trinkets
Of one's own crowd pleasing creation
Enchanted wine blessed chalice drink it
Robes and ritual simulate elation
Sculpt God's own eye and wink it

So busy inside a unique comparison
each lense an aspect of life
Vanity is a forced smile prison
A career, children, husband, wife
Measure up, consensus so implicit

Where are you going with this?

 Sometimes it's poverty
destitute cut off from the sources
Abundance once conjured now a dry creek bed
stained mud yellow

You plan yourself, who you are going to be
weak at the knees, arms drooping
attempting to retrieve that vital energy
Where is that inspiration, creativity that kick that super hot fuel?

Is it just cheap external recognition
is that all it boils down to
Where are you carrying yourself to
What kind of being are you?

Are you a trier an attempter
How's the water, hows the weather
What's it like being just a trier among all of this
just a mission planner and failer ensconced?

where can you go with your ideas
can you desperately achieve something
Are you panicking right now
Can you create another world to run to?

Move people with words
Is this all just a game
Is that how you've framed it
Just an illusion, just an excursion...

Just one big fat nice try!
One nice big patt on the back
By those who've acquired it all already
"You did a good job, but better luck next time."

struggling through like a giraffe
Two minutes after being born
No one to guide you out on the savannah
just afterbirth slippery on the hooves

The unprotected skull

 On a hard rocky earth
God has given these creatures soft skulls
under Hail and meteors
So vulnerable

Our congnitive senses
Focused inside our heads
Such a violent world
Couldn't we be made like steel

accidents and aggression
storms and earthquakes
A poweful sun shining down
Our soft vulnerable heads exposed

We are lifelong babies 
searching for safespaces
when there are none
trying to avoid brain damage

putting on protection and helmets
Building nukes and shelters
singing nursery rhymes 
telling comforting white lies

In small letters

It was a huge warehouse market that connected to a subterranean chamber. Hundreds of stalls selling food drinks and coffee.
I walked to the coffee stall counter with my son. We ordered a coffee and a hot chocolate, except the teenage girl taking our order didn't speak english. Neither my son nor I could find hot chocolate on the menu. We found coffee on the menu. She understood when we said coffee and pointed to it on the menu to confirm for us.
 We could see over the bench what looked to be ingredients for a hot chocolate. But we didn't know the translation for it.
So I just asked her for two coffees. I took my son's hand and we searched among the packaged products infront of the stall for hot chocolate. A line of impatient people was quickly forming.
There were several packaged products in five hundred gram bags that looked like hot chocolate, but I couldn't read the writing and neither could my son.
An older woman from the line was looking over, before she abruptly turned away I saw a glint as if she knew both what we were looking for and how to speak the local language.
The two men working with the girl, one her father, one her uncle were laughing. They understood less english than the girl, but they understood the situation we were in, finding us the most amusing thing that day no doubt. I looked at the two of them, big men far too big to be making coffee in a small stall. Thick stubble that probably formed two minutes after their shave.
One of the men, the girl's dad I assumed, walked over to us and handed us our coffees. I said thank you and the man nodded as if he understood. The coffee smelled incredible and I could see two very clean stools and a bench, a few meters away.
Then I heard an excited "ha" from my son who was still scanning through the hundreds of packaged products on waist high shelves.
I turned to him, he was holding up a bag with steaming mug on it. The brand and description were indecipherable. But in tiny letters under the image of the mug were the words "Hot chocolate".
I took a sip of the aromatic coffee and looked at the line, by now it had tripled.
The place was empty when we had arrived, now there was barely space to move.
I sipped my coffee and said to him we should sit down and wait for the line to shrink. He grabbed the small sack in his hand. He looked up at me and told me he had never liked coffee and that he had reminded me of the fact. I nodded and told him I was sorry.
We sat on the stools I enjoyed the best coffee I had ever had in my life, while my son stared resentfully at the line. No matter how much I tried to comfort him, the contempt wouldn't leave his face.
Instead of line shrinking it just extended as more and more people arrived.
I tried to tell my son I felt his frustration and in actual fact I had been through many little situations just like this one. He just folded his arms and frowned.
But actually I did know exactly what he was feeling if only he knew. There were many such instances I could recall without effort from my own past.
In my son's case, when you are young caffeine has little effect as kids are usually bursting with energy. Infact it's sometimes just comfort and sweetness a child seeks, like in a hot chocolate for example.
Sometimes parents don't read the fine print.