Play Misty For Me, Sam, I Can Take It If She Can

Imagining what my life might have looked like if I’d been
undersexed: a junkie, perhaps, or someone who made
a great deal of money. The branch is bare where the kitten
once clung, its eyes telling me to hang in there. Or was it
me, imploring the kitten (& why should I wish for the
kitten to let go)? We must all hang in there together,
or assuredly we will all hang in there separately.
They sang about chasing the dragon, but it was just
a kitten, purring in the wilderness. Where there’s smoke, there’s
a dragon, & where there’s kitsch, there’s a kitten. Imagining
what life might have looked like if there hadn’t been nine of them.
Imagining Steely Dan chasing the kitten instead,
time out of mind but not, alas, out of joint. Oh, kitten:
maybe you didn’t drop. Maybe you raptured straight up.
Maybe you simply landed on your feet like, you know, a
cat. Maybe I’m simply staring at the wrong bare branch.
Undersexed isn’t the right word, but it doesn’t matter
because I wasn’t, I’m not. Still, I’ll never have a mug
that says World’s Greatest Dad. Or a kitten, or a cat.
But I cling to the branch. Persistance. Pass it on. Pass by.
That beautiful highway shimmies in the sunbaked twilight.
Behind the billboards, dragons dream, passed out atop bags
of gold, snoring smog, imagining what life might have looked
like if they’d chased a ball of yarn instead of the sublime.
Imagining the sublime up a tree again, dammit,
one more distraction, the goddamned stupid sublime. No, not
imagining. Knowing. All those hours. Picking them out of
a line-up. Telling them, one by one, to just hang in there.
Where the air is rarefied, & every branch is bare,
& the fireman on his ladder finds peace at last.