#22

Coming may always be the same as going.
No one can tell which is more painful
or more exhilarating.
You are in a room
with two doors
and there is a constant flow
of people walking in and out.
Going where?
Coming from where?
Some stay for a cup of coffee,
but most pass through
in a hurried trot;
they've got something in their vision
that exists beyond your room.
And what about you?
Are you only staying still
or is the world moving along
outside your window?

#21

"Snow (the muthafuckin' man) Ball"
by: Judd M. Schiffman

I only date guys
who draw pictures of cats.

#20

This cat would rather feel funny
than feel nothing at all.

#19

Silent animals
lay down in the nighttime swale;
dreaming of daytime
and wondering what it would be like
to be alive
in the light.

#18

Four score and seven cats ago,
my grandfather was alive,
a young boy in fact,
selling newspapers in Chicago,
on the corner of 39th and Racine,
with his best friend Jackie Lane.
This was before the war,
before my grandmother,
before the fearsome task of
raising children
while abandoning liquor.
And even though my grandfather loved all beings
but hated cats;
loved all women
but hated my grandmother,
he must be forgiven,
for his life,
he must be granted that.

#17

Snowball Finally Makes it out of the House
or

Bird Watching in Central Park

#16

(copied from Gurbuz Dogan Eksioglu's painting, "On the Edge".)

"I'm living to look down!"

#15

"These boots were most definitely not made for walking," Mrs. Doodlebug says to herself. It is the 100th time she has said this out loud since she left Oregon a month ago, walking everyday from sun up until dusk. She says it to herself because there is no one else around in these farmlands of northern Texas. She is passing a man-made lake that is dried up and sandy, thinking about a drink of water or ginger ale which would be her preference.
Mr. Doodlebug disappeared 5 weeks ago, he never came home from work, never called or sent a message. Mrs. Doodlebug flew into a panic, she was frantic for information about his whereabouts and crazy with anxiety until her own friends shyly suggested that perhaps he had left her for another woman, or more likely, another man which would be the better situation since then it would leave no fault on Mrs. Doodlebug; maybe that’s just who he is, who he was throughout their entire marriage. Wasn’t the fact that his suitcase was gone and all three pair of his reading glasses were missing from his nightstand proof enough? This suggestion of infidelity seemed ridiculous to Mrs. Doodlebug and only reinforced her belief that something terrible had happened to Mr. Doodlebug.
It was more likely to her that the Russians had captured her husband. Mr. Doodlebug was a smart man and there was no question that he was completely capable of working for the CIA. Likewise, Mrs. Doodlebug was a smart woman and had the investigatory skills of a cat. She would find Doodlebug and bring him home. With pure confidence and stamina, Mrs. Doodlebug packed her leather suitcase, stepped into her boots and began to walk in search of her husband. She was determined to walk all over the country to find him, carrying with her a picture of him taken at their seventh anniversary party; he looked so handsome in his sweater vest. Now it had been a month and she was in Texas, sweaty and exhausted, hungry and weary but not discouraged in the least; perhaps because she believed so strongly in their love or perhaps because it hadn’t yet occurred to her that if the Russians really did kidnap her husband, he would most likely be in Russia.

#14

There is nothing like floating through the infinite
sans
a space helmet.
It is like being in love
and floating through some body that is not your own,
without a shield.
Stars and words,
black holes and challenges
come at you
and threaten to,
in the case of Outer Space,
make your head explode,
and in the case of love,
cut you open.
But either result is exciting,
much more exciting than waiting for a bus,
or filling out paperwork.
In this life, I'd rather be a Space Cat,
or at least be in Love.

#13

"I was born of a snowstorm!"

#12

I thought that this storm was going to blow me over,
that the water rising from the creek would wash all things away,
clearing debris and moving it about the landscape:
destroying parts...recreating parts.
I thought then that the snow, which would surely come by midnight
and stay until morning,
would cover all, leaving things clean and new,
turning all edges round and soft.
And for a moment, the world became a very exciting place to be,
and that feeling remained, and still remains
for things are stormy all the time.

#11

He says in a German accent:
I do not believe that god is dead...
conversely, he is very much alive and has not
yet had the realization of the position he holds.
We have not yet had the realizations
of the positions we hold.

#10

When giant cat is watching,
everything goes awry.

(Witsman/Schiffster collab.)

#9

Right before he fell asleep,
an image entered his mind,
which was that of
a giant snowflake falling into his jelly jar.

#8

Catsup,
sun's up

corn husk,

soon dusk,
sliver moon

common loon,

yodels true,

all is blue,
corn husk,
moving through,

evening tides,

heron glides.

#7

My cat's eyes aren't right,
they are backwards, backwards eyes.
Seeing everything.

#6

My baby teeth are finding their way into you!
Chompers chomping, swimming head first,
into your belly button and up your intestine.
And the body is so intense with it's reds and blues.
Blues.
Blues lead the way and I'm following veins.
They are lighting up a highway that I knew not of until now.
I have to eat my way through this innermost viscera
and when I think I have finally made it to the center,
when I truly believe that I have made it to the center,
there is more and there is always more.
So I've got to stop eating now because my belly is full
and there is more of you than I can ever imagine fitting inside of me.
I close my mouth and I close my eyes and it is in this way that I now swim.
And though my eyes are closed, I still see the blues.
Blues.
And they guide me still...
now around the side, now to the back
where I find a niche in the sacral curve,
in the sacred curve I stop and rest and curl up like a cat.
In the saintly sacrum I try one last time to take a bite out of you
but find, instead, that all of my baby teeth are gone,
my baby mouth is empty and soft
and my tender gums are waiting for big, blue,
always new teeth to appear.
And they will come.
They will come with you,
and
they will come without you.

#5

A few years ago
I fell in love
with a peeping Tom.
I was frightened
at first
by the upper half of his
face making it's way
across my second story
bedroom window
but was reassured
by my experience that
all relationships
begin with fear.
And as time went on
Tom's gaze became
softer,
as I knew it would,
changing from a
glacial glare
of squinted eyes and
a tense forehead
to a
warm pleading...
big, black, deer-esque
eyes that said,
without a harshness,
"open this window,
let me in."
And I never did
let him in,
but I loved that half
of his face
wholly,
wholly,
through the glass.

#4

I am tired of sleeping
in a cave
but I cannot get up
because the sliver
of light
that sneaks through
in the distance
shines far too bright!

#3

For most of my childhood
there were no cats
in my family's home.
Just the two
who lived there since
my birth
and only persisted
until a few years after;
Black-Cat, who loved
no one
but my father,
and Grey-Cat
who I nursed into death
with a bonnet on her head,
placed in a shoebox
lined with doll-sized
blankets.
After that,
there were no more
cats,
only dogs,
who I loved,
but who barraged
through the house
and turned it sloppy;
or perhaps it had
always been sloppy.
From what I remember,
after the cats,
everything was
out in the open.

#2

Sleeping on my feet,
I'm sleeping on his whiskers.
Sleeping in the snow.

#1

Cat in the evening,
wants to catch a butterfly.
Crepuscular cat.