“Three Cool Cats”

*Elegy (a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead)

Three Cool Cats
To all my friends
To all my cats
To all my cats that were friends
To my best friend’s best friend Trixie
You one-earred, two-hearted, twelve-toed hermaphrodite
If meow means love
Then, “I meow you”
If meow means you’re hungry
Then I’m hungry too
If meow means pet me
Then meow as well
If all dogs go to heaven
Do all cats go to hell? No.
My darling Chiquita
Zen Master and master meditator
Manx and twenty-one years old

When you sang meow it meant:

“The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey – don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride…’ And we … kill those people. Ha ha, ‘Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real!’ It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because – it’s just a ride.

And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.

Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead, spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

Thank you very much, you’ve been great.”

[several gunshots ring out, Bill mimes being hit and falls to floor, motionless.]

Actually that was Bill Hicks
And the story he told
Here are my elegy cards
Hear them fold

*actual picture of my childhood best friend, however this isn’t the Trixie in the poem unfortunately, but instead was another of his family’s cats the gargantuan “Cuddles”.😺

“Spring of 2007 Creative Writing Poetry Portfolio”