Two Poems

Poem for Pussies.

You stupid leopard. You, lazing there reading Whitman between naps like a pied spud. What spot is this the rogue one on your hip that doesn’t tap the rhythm of your coat? Brain of a star fruit. Yet lithe enough to duck poachers. How’s it done, falseface? How’ve you lulled the jungle into shameless flirts? What’s the future of a slouch like you? Roaming in and out of myth, wedding no one? Newsprint-smeared nose growing spiteless? Mostly, it’s pity hangs my shirt up in your wardrobe. Speckless life is yours yet you pick brindle. Tiger.                        for Shafer Hall Tiger says “I’ll tear your new orifice” with his eyes. Ire. Iger plus “N” is the river I send my hate across to evade his name shame. Middle is “grr,” a gerund with fur. I’m a jungle neophyte. The height I leap transforms air to stair. To err is human, but it’s tiger too. If only I could undo his receptor, unglue the high gloss in his roaring ogle. Once I was mammalian. Now I race through past eras, aping.