Tiger

Caged by your stripes-----
How you prowl about yourself, licking,
beating the bars of your very own ribs…

Is fresh meat there, fresh sores?
Or must you look to gobble elsewhere, &,
while at it, obsessive as a bell clapper,
be consumed all the while by such time
out of mind?

Countless nights, countless days
I’ve been as wild as I’ve watched, recorded,
I, the frozen note taker detaching
from the latest matches you take flame from,
the note taker, impassioned, & not only
on the page,
for it is all National Geographic
concerned with pouncing & the prey…

Just so I pray, pray when you are predatory &
the shadows of your frame are a cauldron crown
of heat, of ice.
Love, for the life of me, fathoming the scepters
you spit upon, fathoming the fur, the claws,
the enthronement of royal wheat
pissed to a putrid stench, the furious spraying
to arrogate but desecrate the plots of your turf…

Love, for the life of me, despite all of my fathoming,
I still crouch amid tree crotches & parapet shadows,
my camera pen witnessing & recording,
my eyes burning like Blake’s…

Furies fill them, furies for mortal forests, mortal
hands cast into stark symmetry, shading the paper,
coloring the markings your very panting graphs.
But what of it, this wall of tears amid my steady sight?
What of it…
the leaves there like wailing tokens, the too numerous
imprints of palms…?

Sure, I watch as tigress true, so to whom
am I the prey, for what do I prowl,
with my heart pressing to burst against these ribs,
against this cage
I too made my own?