Cool Costume, What Are You Supposed To Be?

Leader: my occipital lobe.
I can see you in the Stark Street secondhand store,
sneaky white cat disguised as a man,
black sneaks and a beer-stained kiss,
the suggestion of our re-conception
replaces my anger.
Wisping away my grudge in the cold November drafts-
I still don't dare to call you back.

Gentle, purring, one sharp green eye,
I gasp and gauze wraps my arms, and my
cold limbs contort into a
well-practiced mummy pose:
proud shapeshifter
beacon and butcher,
You used to love me like a noose,
I once belonged to you.

Dancing on crows toes in hurricanes of smoke and
coffee, vapor-like constellations,
redolent of dangerous dinner dates,
hard-to-hear tarot readings, I saw, cloudy then,
The Prince of Pentacles, or
so sobriety revealed:
Little white cat holding a world of disaster
in his porcelain paws.
Forever is a long and secluded session.

I squint down at once-worshipped vases,
I set up camp in a sea of black fabric,
and I can nearly recall your purr-
but today it sounds like a hungry cannon, preparing to
head a clandestine militia of accusations
pointing me out in a blizzard
of exaggeration.

You’re a small sacred snow cat,
revved up for the hunt-
I saw your costume, and believed it,
smokescreen donned:
a man in Love.