To me it is you, little kitten at play,
inhabiting this dream. I hear your soft squeak
wake me. Many years from now I will speak
of your broken hip, and the very first day
we saw you at the Humane Society-
both unspayed and with claws. That did not last long
as your black and white face filling up this song,
caring how you played with our feet, constantly,
as we tried ways to sleep, dream of what is now,
when I pick you up and your squeak is no ghost,
thinking of other stray names that came, and how
I chose Chia. If I should say this to you
would centuries cross the darkness, again lost
in your eyes changing me? To me it is you.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
Blue kestrel, you are not so much
Death, as its quick bringer
to the vole. Is it such
as malice, or nature's hunger,
freeing the vole's motionlessness,
in that last subsecond
of unconscious duress,
or does it matter what beckoned?
The fraught beauty of your plumage
shall have to hold its due
inside the winged pillage.
You are gone. A part of me, too,
feels the urge to sink a talon
in what will be not young again.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
Nor wives nor enemies shall guide me away
from my duties. As liege I know everything
that wanders from here to there, and everywhere
I am loved. Inside, I hurt. What is a clown
but another person's misery? I am
no jester, yet here I sit. Will the young prince
keep me, or view me part of his father's court?
No matter. I turn to the future and see
only good things and prosperity. Ahead
of me people see John, and they call me John-
not Sir. I am one of the masses. Beloved
by all manner of creeds and classes. The day
is here, and I greet it, depleted of me-
and any other bits of humility.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
Pascal [in a box] rolled the dice one day,
then passed them to Fermat, who decided
not to play. He then palmed the pair of cubes
and started to say…. but decided no
way would be better. Newton, however,
shook with excitement, even as he shook
the dice, and rolled them half-way down the felt,
where Einstein played nothing in his brief smirk
(to Heisenberg surely some sort of scheme)
to knock von Neumann out of the saddle,
and into the game. But, damn! Then Tipler
proved them wrong, and showed Pascal had been right
to pass the dice, because Archimedes' game
was fixed to the last breath of recorded time.
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
it
ate all that it could;
or rather, all that it should. This beast-
was it reptile or dino or something else?-
opened its jaws wide, and then
ate
everything upon its plate,
figuratively speaking. Of course, you know
it was a carnivore- an eater of meat; or not?
You know, I do not know it
all.
Encyclopediae do. I think
I will open one wide, and pretend it is Moschops
one late Permian afternoon, and tear at what flesh I can-
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider
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