some notes towards: four most overwritten subjects / inside and outside

some notes towards: four most overwritten subjects / inside and outside


Cats outside run through grass
Leaping, amazed at new freedom
Meow at humans, noses scratched
Appear again days later, thinner
Cats outside get admired by Charles Bukowski

Cats inside look outside
Casting glares at the rustle in the bushes
Growl as they strike down mice
Sit in laps, unlike anything else
Cats inside get ruffled up by Stevie Smith

If you take your cat on a leash
It will be both inside and outside at once
It will run up trees as you walk
Yowl when it can go no higher, leap down
Stuck in an uncomfortable third dimension

Cats are human, pretty much
House cats, we made them
Even outside wandering through our tunnels

Clouds outside make days different
From other days, in the quality of light
Or they make Rorschach shapes
Clouds outside love the pathetic fallacy
And wander around lonely

Clouds inside seep in as fog
And can't be seen, only felt on skin
You can only see them with distance
Invisible they mean sad or confused
Clouds come inside on little cat feet

Clouds high up can be inside and outside
Like a foggy hut on a mountaintop
Or when you fly in a plane through one
Though maybe only if it crashes
If the plane breaks in half, the cloud comes inside

Clouds might as well be human
We think they are so persistently
Only rarely does their real scale hit the sublime

Poetry outside happens in ovals and circles
Wind rustling pages, eyes glancing up
To check clouds for rain
There is always something blustery about it
Poetry outside is Robert Frost and freestyle

Poetry inside is where it's supposed to live
In books, or in hearts if you want to be poetic
In minds, clouded by words
In the thoughts of someone in a crashing plane
Of a childhood book with practical cats

The easiest way to resolve is go backwards
Before there were words or understanding
Before cats evolved, before there were clouds
Before the Earth formed an atmosphere
Before an inside or an outside, there was poetry

Poetry is inhuman
Everywhere the Earth from the beginning
No voices are needed