Poetry by David McLean

these cats and our torpor

the extravagant languor
of this mourning night
dwells in these fibers
and bones we are,
brutalised bodies
pinned bare
under the sky,
meat and its scars
and the trickling blood
that quenches the mad stars,
wherever they are
in the black ribbed cage
dead heaven is,
lunatic as existence
and too pissed to think
of other than more drinking

and i am possessed
with insane jealous rage
if a cat prefers its mother
over me, just a minute;
i understand cats,
and they me,
but women are creepy,
wild blind fish that swim
in their cold black seas
full of fathers,
cats and me are crazy
and burn this painful
madness, but essentially
harmless, cats are cruel
and violent, they say,
but i think we're fundamentally alright -
we don't do that much wrong,
really, we're beasts but basically
nice, prisoners of hormones and
life