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They found him wandering the streets, alone
at 2:00 AM in a large city, the city’s name
is unimportant, it was large and thus dangerous
at 2:00 AM, as they all are nowadays,
and he was repeating the same thing over and over
“I never expected the tail!”

And that was all anyone could get him to say
In fact they couldn’t get him to stop saying it
The police, the doctors, everyone tried
He had no identification on him, no wallet, nothing.
Only, “I never expected the tail!”

They sedated him and he kept saying it
He said it in his sleep
He said it to everyone and to no one at all
and always as if for the first time, with the same abrupt
catch of surprise or perhaps shock in his voice

“I never expected the tail!”

It was a hopeless case, everyone said so

Until one morning a new nurse was making
the rounds with his doctor, and she said
the obvious thing, that no one else had thought to
say, “It was probably just a cat.”

That was the end, of course.

With his dying breathe he hissed,
“There’s always a cat!”

all the Fridays in February said
a tall, gaunt man walking towards me
down the Mill Creek trail
all the Fridays in February he repeated
and I said What about
All the Fridays in February?
He replied,
All the Fridays in February
as he walked past me down the trail
saying again, All the Fridays in February

And what about them?

Should we consider them
Hollow Days?
Remove them from consideration

I’ve decided to take the day off

On

All the Fridays in February

They shall be declared Hollow Days

Snow
so
wet
It’s
Rain
with
Delusions
of
Grandeur

There is a Fog
of War
Upon the Land
and it doesn’t Come
On little cat Feet

Snow flakes drifting down at midnight, no two alike, but don’t tell them, they are forever recognizing pals from snows ages ago. So too with Christmas, no two alike and yet we hear echoes drifting down the midnight years from Christmases long ago, lullabying us as the days grow longer and the multifaceted dawn draws near.

Merry Christmas!

I followed just behind. It was hot, the city buzzed. It could have been any city. She walked, feigning a desire to get from here to there. I zoned the small of her back, just above her tight shorts. Looking for what? Expecting. Surely not a spider, as big as my hand, moving up? It was impossibly black, and must have been a tattoo, and yet. I closed in. She walked like a woman used to being caboosed. And I liked being the caboose for a time. Far too short a time as it happened, for in a blink, she was gone.

But where? Perhaps in that bar. It could have been any bar. I don’t normally enter bars. But who’s normal. I entered. She was seated at the bar, with a full shot glass in front of her. The stool to her left was empty. I filled it. Ordered a beer, too expensive for the glass. She ignored me, lifting the shot glass and draining it in one swallow. It could have been any whisky. She slid from the stool, turned towards me, bending a little, her behind behind, the spider secretted.

”Do you like my spider?” She asked. Her dark eyes spun like tiny figure skaters in death spirals. I was woozy and couldn’t respond. She added, “Was he coming or going?”

“Going,” I said. She straightened, put her hand on her hip like some World War II pinup, and said with a kind of Marlene Dietrich breathiness, “Sometimes he’s coming.” She turned and walked away, her lower back completely uninhabited.

I started to drain my glass of ale as she had her whisky, when about halfway, I noticed a black spider at the bottom, probably just etched into the glass.

It could have been any coincidence.

I’ve got a book of poetry titled The Instrumentality of Communication available on Amazon. Check it out under the Links drop down.

Our cat, Gabby, gives a lukewarm review.  But she is peeved about how I some times touch her tail without permission. She’ll get over it.

So why ‘Tales that Wag the Dog’?  Well, Tales that Wag the Cat?  Come on, who am I kidding.  Only the Cat wags the tale or tail.  And the Tail is the Unexplored Country, except with explicit permission.  So sometimes only a Dog will do.