MARK WITUCKE

lake city 2005 ~ robbo took me in after my girlfriend threw me out the front door one whiskey soaked night ~ my royal typewriter a professional buffalo of a machine followed through the attic window into the front yard ~ along with my library ~ there it sat for months like a crushed iron flower collecting rust --><-- robbo and i settled into a routine ~ hed return from work ~ wed set in on our poems ~ hed type ~ bob back and forth ~ grunting ~ drain cheap beer ~ eventually smash out a poem ~ i set up his skywriter ~ sometimes wed play music ~ sometimes the only sounds were the chatter of typewriters and his guttural litany as we worked back to back in the smoky room --><-- robbo owned a cat ~ i did not like it ~ it would shit on his chair and piss around the house ~ it did not like me either ~ it felt neglected and would leave turds in our path ~ as if to trip us ~ one day i returned to the desk with the beautiful skywriter ~ a yellow puddle on my manuscripts ~ the fucking cat had pissedall over my poetry --><-- its amazing that neither of us ever booted that bastard off the balcony ~ goes to show how love is blind until it snaps and that a man can get attached to a creature even when it shits all over him