mouses.

Mice are as quiet as a whisper and I can't catch them by hand. A story of insanity.

Mice are as quiet as a whisper and I can’t catch them by hand. I’m going to have thirty mouse traps and on each of them, I’m going to have a cherry and a thick piece of cheese. The trap will snap and break their backs. Then, when all is silent again, I can lay my head down and sleep forevermore.

Amen, said the preacher. Amen, said the divine. All the ones who say Amen are never sons of mine.

Please, please, thank you. Good-by, Mister Mouse. Good-by, pattering feet. And usher in peace and loneliness and where are those traps? Am I alone in this head-hunt? Don’t leave me here, standing in the cold and rain and night. Beauty perseveres and rots and dies too fast to see, too fast to stop or catch or stand by anyone at all. But please, please, thank you. Just for a second, just for me, let thy youth be preserved in stone, let thy flesh become bone. And hell hath no fury like a dying man.

When you look down, what do you see? I see the Devil, the Devil and me. And when you die, do you reap what you’ve sown? All I can say is when you die, you’re alone.

And laughter fills their heads as sleep fills their body. Where are we, where am I? Does the way the sun shines through your window make any difference any longer? Can a stopped watch stop time, age, life? Can a ticking bomb silence a man, a nation, a world? O, my Brothers, how shall we know? But then a squeak, a sniffle, and the mice, the mice, the mouses…Forever young, forever unknown, and the mice as they run make a strange, silent taptaptap, a maddening taptaptap that makes me cry and swell and tip.

A bloated face, a worn-out place. An empty tear, a childhood fear. What goes into this lovely wicked stew? Everyone, my dear; he and she and me and you.

Can you bite without teeth? Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated; what did he do, asks the mouses. A bite without teeth is a gnaw, a penny without copper is a nickel. Life and death and afterlife make up that biggest lie that we whisper to you- can you feel our breath or just the calamity of a snapping trap, a broken back? Love is beauty but beauty isn’t love. Will the wicked find hell or peace in damnation? Or will the mice roam free, left to steal and sneak and soliloquise? I smell the sound of dreams in my hopes and fears. Is the impossible possible once in a blue moon, kitty corner to surprise and sorrow and lust and loathe? Yes, no, please, thank you, good-by. Mister Mouse, Mister Mouse, come out to play.

The way they curse, the way they scream makes you think it all was a dream. But look close, look far, they deserve eternities of these scars.

There’s poison on each cherry, poison on each thick slice of cheese. Blood is thicker than water, lies thicker than truth. Mice heads will roll, like bodies in an earthquake and then the silence of nothing and then the forevermore sleep? In that order or none at all I know it will end. Lucifer and Gabriel and dark and light- who believes? I do, I don’t, I can’t remember. Just give me a bourbon, on the rocks, give me the straight whiskey and I will partake. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. Forget me, Mother, for I am no son of yours. In loveliness, I find strength, in hideousness, I find myself. When the mirror lies, smash it and beg for the truth and then the mouses, the mices, they’re coming for their cherry-red death, their one last look at beauty and the truth of the world: no one is sane, no one can say it with a straight face. Ha ha, hee hee, ho ho, done. Like a laugh, only blissful and quiet as a whisper, like those mice.

Drip, drop; the rain won’t stop. Splish, splash; it’s a blood bath. Your eyes are like lies, your smile full of guile, and clashing, smashing- the world, unfurled. I bless you with the authority of the Church. The raven of death sits quiet on its perch. Can he see what none can? Can he see the peace in the ending of man? When life is done, who will have won? Penny for a rhyme, cash for a good time. And running red and orange opposition and yellow yells and green groans and battered blue and indigo innocence and violet violence. A rainbow of nothing, for nothing and no one.

When the final trap snaps, I am alone again. Alone with my sins and horrors and demons and a lifetime of forevermore sleep ahead because the mouses, the mice, they told the story for me, made it real like no one can. Do angels dream of promiscuity? Do hellhounds dream of glorification? Yahweh, Jehovah, God. Satan, Hades, Lucifer. Dost thine love extend to me?

Good-by, I say to thirty Mister Mouses. Good-by, good-by, thank you, please, please.