A cat, inscrutable, will never tell

A cat, inscrutable, will never tell
Of what befell before you took her in.
Down empty country lanes, through heaven or hell,
You'll never, ever know where she has been.
Her life before she came to you, meowing,
And, seeing your face, began, at once, to purr,
(At which, before her quiet insistence bowing,
You brought her food and fed her, stroked her fur
And loved her, saying she was now your own -
And overlooked her fierce, inhuman mind)
Remains a strange and winding path unknown.
You might as well have tried to own the wind.
Enough to say your lives have intersected
And friendship bloomed in ways most unexpected.

Copyright by Ike Wassom 2010.  All rights reserved.

The Labyrinth: A Nightmare

Dread  Oppressive dread  Again I wake up here
in chambers delved from fear  These winding labyrinths wend
from Hell to Dad's old shed  Through attic boards I peer
from here to yesteryear  Down underneath my bed
I wander wracked with loss through endless whispering darkness
stalked by something unseen  Here dripping walls and moss
there close wood walls and stillness a plastic-faced machine
church-factories overhead  In water cold and clear
there waits a concrete bier  These twisted tunnels thread
from corners in my head down crawlspaces they veer
to spaces wide and sheer cross rivers boiling red
they wind down halls of Chaos through my opened chest
from which grows shoots of green and when I'm gone they'll cast
my deepest thoughts my pathos out on deep serene

Copyright 2013 by Ike Wassom.  All rights reserved.