“Peanut”

What must his face,
framed in such extreme
softness, feel attempting

entry at all costs 
through the barred door

Spanish cats say "miau"
while this one cries
MOWWW, repeated 

in the reckless spirit 
of giving 
and the hounding 
animosity of needing

Take my love
There's no time to spare 
We are fast falling

White paws
solicitous, drooped
like the corner of his
still-moon eyes

as he is shamelessly
evoking some
sense into you 

Containment

Winds, hands, howls break
this city and beat it.

The overflow of time
reddens, fortifies our grief

and fixes battle gear
to the underside of knuckles

palm lines spiraling inward
towards numb clutch -- 

on the fester of speculation
on the wheels of judgment

Even to leave our houses
and desert ourselves,

embrace a familiar face
stand still while the thought 

dies, is venturing too far

Louder

All the ways in which we can misconstrue and be misunderstood. Our actions go before us like birds of prey. Our speech falters and fails to circumscribe our motives, the tenderest and darkest parts of us. Our fears have been rooted so desperately into that dark. We cannot know how to identify those things which do not have a face, or a name, whose evil escapes the light of scrutiny and language. How we are all hurting, in an abundance of ways. How our rage lifts up our hearts into our fists, sees scorn in the stranger, flies over the rooftops of our city and down to meet the grainy pavement our knees are kissing. Who is deserving of this human tide, washing its pain into the veins of our neighborhoods. Even the spark of daily irritations boil into a raining river which wants to flood the hollow shelters of privilege, the frivolity and carelessness of its life, and break its brittle, self-serving bones.