Cat Guts
for H.L.T.

going to have to shake like a dog,
wet, don’t want to be, to free myself
of her ideas—words to restrict me

her sensibility and mine, not one and the same

need the heat at the equator, need the cold at the poles
in need of freezing as well as fire

whatever wishes to come from my pen
whatever it wishes to express, I let it

just as my body must, whatever oozes
so many juices, so many substances

our literature needs to grow up, needs to free itself
from ropes and chains, shoes and socks
caps and gowns

literature in need of wings
harbor birds above the water, fishing, scrapping

not prepared to die of constipation
or suffer from it ever again

bowels in a knot, with a pencil, with assistance
loosed it out, fart and shit as freely as I breathe

plaque in veins and arteries, must not accumulate
in the body politic nor in my own body

what a bloody mess
when a murder is committed
when a body’s left
in a road somewhere
in a room somewhere


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2009
6:25 p.m. 05.08.09