Pseudopsychosis.

God fish-lines death,

warming beast of waves,

congeries of suffering, and it must burden the toxins

and sprawlings of the moon; it hung a neck

upon the curragh becoming wraith,

it will desert the bloodline it came,

paws toned to grass, father beating a shovel into the ground;

breathes, a hierarchy of blood,

in absence of stone, her ghost ranks to

the sire of madness, dizzy with ocean

pillaged another bone from father,

yet nary a tear I shed, I only recently

when she died almost ten years ago,

awaiting a drowning, hands nigh frost

reflecting over a monk’s shaved head

as the ocean’s mouth hushed,

and the spine of the ghost imaginary axis roars,

salved with two legs, thrown to sea,

drowned to the howls of the moon elm,

begging for asylum; and I imagine her beauty raveled

to death gnawing, laboring upon the broken back of a gazelle, fossils which pierce its antler bone.

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Written for the dVerse prompt: “So tonight poets, let’s bear witness in our local neighbourhood. Look at your local paper (if you still have such a thing), find a publicly reported event, a tree planting or a tree felling, a dam opening or a landslide. Perhaps something you witnessed personally – whatever inspires.”

This is unfortunately a true poem for me. I thought back to all of the pets I had that died many years ago. I remember seeing one of their lifeless bodies on the tile floor.

I also thought back to two other cats that are deceased. They were both very old but they died unexpectedly. I won’t go into too much detail, but the look of death in their eyes overwhelms me. I finally was able to cry ten years later over one of them–a cat that I was really close to.

I thank you for reading and letting me share a bit of my life and grief. Thank you.

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