Wet Cat Food and Coffee
(Inktober Prompt, Day 15: Weak)


Wet cat food and coffee.
I'd feed neither to my friends,
and only one to my pets.
I feel like simultaneously
the shame of my ancestors
and the heathen of my peers.

Terrorism, they say, is here.
Starbucks, they say, is everywhere.
Freedom, they say, is nowhere.
But I am unstimulated by all three.
Buzzed on righteous fury
like a live wire surrounded by oil,
I don't need the stimulants
to see fear, labels, and nations.
All three are everywhere
and only recently have I learned
I can't afford to give a damn
about any one of them.

Wet cat food and coffee,
the mingled scents choke,
building in my nostrils like smog.
Strangely, in an accident,
the less evolved would choose better
than the bitter modern man.

Universally, nothing is more revered
than the poison of long spoiled crops.
We've warped our minds
to add earthiness in small slices.
Cultivate the most painful fruits,
and mingle our earliest drink
with a bitter nut to call a delicacy.
For all these triumphs,
we have rewarded most of humanity
with slavery, theft, and defamation.
I have to trust in the belief
the slaves will outlive their captors.

Wet cat food and coffee,
tin cans and plastic bags,
the artificial burn in your mouth
from chewing a pencil eraser's metal.
Perhaps the sin wasn't creation
but their mass consumption.

Seven years plus twelve
and another two or eight besides,
and only just now have I learned
it's okay to eat microwaved pizzas
as long as you pop a couple of pills.
One to assure your body
the human race persists despite nature.
The other to assure your mind
that numbness is preferable
even as animals are shown
to possess more altruism than our leaders.
We are no longer bound to the world.

Wet cat food and coffee,
both might be learned tastes,
much like life is to everyone
who wears their heart on their sleeve.