"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."

A nothing dragged
From decades ago
Screaming into the present
Colliding
Into a mangled
Train wreck
Car smash
Plane crash;
The nothing, 
Of this 
Instant.

I could:
Choose to believe
that nothing,
just like I believe
With incredible good-luck
I've won the 
Jackpot
Grand-prize
Out of
Nothing.

 Bomber jackets
With Top Gun re-runs
Air War stories
And red-hot flak guns

Dark pilot shades
Turned to the sun
Bandits on high
Make bombing runs

Icarus and
Hell's Fallen Angels;
Cool as all hell
Wings locked in battles

Flights of fancy
And fleeting day dreams
Shot down as one,
All motes in sunbeams.

Po-faced poets,
Pen,
Pious poems,
Ponderously,
Period.

I've an
Almost
Constant
Fear 
(I must now
Confess).

She'll In
Her it
Madness
Yours
(No surely,
Not mine).

Or worst
Of all
From both
Combined
(In carnal 
Crazy-mess).

Pixellated faces
Peering out
From behind a
Fragrant
Cherry blossom
(Kabuki) Mask

Does the mind's eye
See features
That never are
Or were,
Among those
Scented curtains?

In this strange
Fairyland
Flowers and pixies
Are merely
Fragments of magic
And never never.

Wade into me with iron-hard 

Boots and 
Merciless brass 
Fingers

Torture me with all your love

Twisting
And kneading you
Drag out

All those dirty rotten secrets.

Waking up 
with feet of lead

Pompous Bell
Bronze sounding
Brazen ringing
Meaningless,
Constant,
Donging
Dinging
Bonging
Banging
On and on.
One nonsense
Tolling meter
Best used
To simply,
Blindly,
Mark
Time.

For some poor
unfortunate souls
Thirty seconds
Is their,
Allotted span.



Others can't
Even seem to live
Thirty seconds
Once in
Eighty years.

So the sayings go:
"Clothes make the man",
and "Dress for Success".

But I've had my
Fashionable
Epiphany;

That the man
Brings the style
To the cloth!

Whereas,
Those lacking
Bring nothing.

No confidence?
Buy a logo,
And belonging,

Pre-purchase
A Look, a name,
Personality.

The real answer is;
With panache and a
Confident aplomb

Wear nothing but;
A feather boa,
Your cheeky grin.

How many people do you know,
Do you really,
Understand?

A half, or perhaps
Round dozen?

Oh, you come from
A large, 
extended family?

So, twenty, 
even thirty then?

You're gregarious,
Extroverted,
A social butterfly?

So, you connect,
Deeply with,
Sixty,
Seventy,
One Hundred?
(flit flit)

Now, there are
Literally(!)
Billions
Upon
Billions
Of people in the world!

Think, understand 
And with a sense of
Wonder and
Proportion
In equal measure
Shrink your 
Nameless fears, and
Small-minded prejudices
To a more
Accurate
Size
.

Any time you leave
I leave too
And while you're away
My normal life
Becomes a mix
Of trivial, 
Selfish treats
And anxious waiting,
For your return.

The whole time 
you're gone
All the while
You're not here
All I hear,
Running endlessly
Through my head
Over and over is,
"Remember to feed the cats!"

Sometime we fight
Like cats and dogs
Or cats and rats
Or cats and cats

It's not that good
Or even right
But maybe some cats
Just like to fight.