My Town

I am dank morning street corners
And the cadence of an all day drizzle
Sipping on whiskey shimmering rain
Once an earthy, astir bustling small bar
I’m now the Paxil popping parents
Laid up in million dollar suburban homes
A limping three stringed marionette
With one of its ashy torn frayed ropes
Dragging in vain awkwardly behind
I’m an erect middle finger to the puppeteer
In valleys full of folks sick of California
Doing their damnedest to make California here

I pride myself on my lush green forests
Then make a handsome king’s ransom
Cutting each and every one down
I create the demand, supply the supply
You can hear the bleeding sounds
of legalized heroin pulsing under my streets
One of my nick names is Track Town after all
I missed the memo that said sleeping outside
Wasn’t hip anymore and that flannels were done
After Cobain coaxed the explosive contents out
Of a nickel plated Remington 12 gauge shotgun
Rather than sell out, I’ve decided to develop away
Building condos pushing bourgeoise urban renewal
Killing my inner hippie is just business as usual

Re: Redrum

Average is the new gifted
Just look around
Noses buried
In palms of hands
Zombies walking
with minds bound

Sedentary and medicated
Pabulum entranced
Meme making
Virtual velleities
And a surprising lack
of meaningful activity

There is this blindfolded divide
Masking the glass glory holes
At the abattoir
And what’s in most Americans’
lunch bowls

A carnival of blood
Creaky carousels of subjugation
of the tortured and sentient
Wide eyed and scared
Naked and bleeding
Braised and bruised
Animal corpses splayed
On dinner plates

Cognitive dissonance
is best served well done
Tasty dishes of heads
buried in the ground
Squealing pigs in blankets
Vegan fed Bambis and Babes
Their moist tenderloins
Garnished with broccoli rabe


Steak, pork brisket, beef intestines
Cow tongues in cow asses
Fresh flank from a personal butcher
Chicken wings, chicken gizzards
Chicken cum, chicken feet
Black footed ferret testicles
Stuffed in Turducken meat

Rare Siberian tiger rump
Mink roast, minced pie
Turkey gobble, walrus
All you can ever eat
And just about
everything you can fry

Rubber band bound lobsters
Culinary Gehenna BDSM
Orgy crawfish boils
Chewy monkey brains
Barbecued in the blood of veal
Value menu genocide
Ordered take out
of a species hoodwinked
then served with fries

Scrupulously concealed
the slaughterhouse rules
One cannot record the cries
or bear witness to the atrocities
Yet one cannot go back
more than three commercials
without being sold a Big Mac

Wan souls that will only know
a life held suspended in cages
until their limbs grow around
their bars in confined spaces
They hear their only friends
dads, moms and siblings
and the one good thing
that they’ll ever know
die in abject agony
just minutes before

Please enjoy responsibly
and try not to think
about the origin
of the lives taken
Or their karmic blues
that now reside
inside of you

Solvitur Ambulando

I am the bump and grind
the tooth and nail
The beat drums of sweat
and kilograms of blood

My cherished missing parts
Spavined remainders of my sum
Strewn in ex lovers bed sheets
Dismembered in the napes of gods

Harpooned into bloated effigies
Etched into passing cloud calligraphy
Trillions of marooned cast aways
Culled by beaks of magpie and crow

Parsed into molecular sand sculptures
Infinite flecks of a shattered hourglass
Stranded in deserts of memory
Do not break unless in case of…

This moment is the accretion of
millions and millions of fractions
of an emergency realized

This is my journey
To this goddamn place
I pace just behind the edge
Or at least what’s left of me
This, my purgatory
My paradox
My gathering
My reckoning

Me and all of my familiar spirits
We are all refugees here
Souls without bodies
The unsolvable
And the undefined
Restless entities almost cracked
Our fraying strands of sanity
unraveling Zenos to zero
My angel and her suitors
My births, my love
My deaths my pain
My pride my shames
My gain my loss
My spark my dark

Just one thin line away
pleading their cases
Please God
Give me a reason
any reason

to walk away

The Staggering Marionette

If my poems had lips they would hide in your pout like secret honey
A whispered cache of melody dripping away in a sea of awkward noise

If my poems had balls they wouldn’t be poems at all but skinny dogs
fighting in streets running rabid, their ribs jutting out with fangs bared

If my poems had spines they’d rattle inside snake eyed arroyos
Ancient fork tongued slithering duets between hunter and the hunted

If my poems had throats they’d scream til my lungs filled with blood
Coughing up bad metaphors, non sequiturs and your final kiss
I can still taste it. In thunderstorms. When I think of wolves

If my poems had fingernails they’d rake into your back
Scrawling out a love note just after you came
as you carve out the word goodbye into mine

If my poems had wings they’d be ink black feathery thieves
Snatching up all your keepsakes and shiny troves of treasure
I’d wear your rusty hearts around my claws and caws
And decorate my nest with your rings, vows and lockets

If my poems had stomachs they be distended, swollen and starving
like an Appalachian black bear waking up from its long winter repose

If my poem was you then there would be a long line of past readers
Still searching for the stanzas to fill the absence of your missing words

If my poems could smile they’d swallow up all the sorrow and grief
Lying shipwrecked. Forgotten. Reclaimed under ocean tide

If my poems were hands they’d bleed rivers of stigmata. Noble martyrs
Fallen heir to the holy dance of mountain rock sky dirt and sea
Fallen heiress whom ripped off wings. Whom cut these ropes.
Her birdsong clutching its severed placenta gently pleading

For our return

Men At Work

Curse the tailors
For theirs are the blindfolds and the mask of truth

Curse the steelworkers
For theirs are the bullets and barbwire

Curse the auto manufacturers
For theirs is lung disease and the coughing sky

Curse the judges
For theirs are the gallows and sentences of death

Curse the lumberjacks
For theirs are the thinning forests and the loss of habitat

Curse the mathematicians
For theirs are the trajectories of missiles and the algorithm of censorship

Curse the architects
For theirs are the prisons and the abattoirs

Curse the builders
For theirs are the roads and the concrete laid across beauty

Curse the politicians
For theirs is the homelessness of empathy and tartuffery

Curse the lawyers
For theirs is the profit of vulnerability and the hiss of hot air

Curse the physicists
For theirs are the splitting of the nucleus and the loss of innocence

Curse the butchers
For theirs are the needless murders and the dimming of light

Curse the oil drillers
For theirs is the dreams of seagulls mired in sludge

Curse the bomb makers
For theirs is the hatred of life and the perpetuity of war

Bless the children
For theirs is a struggle for hope despite these men at work

Fear Not

Please don’t tell anyone
But I have this secret
I’ve been meaning to tell
You see I am an angel.
Don’t laugh
I am an angel

I know what you are thinking
And yes you are right
My wings haven’t grown out
Yet…
Or even sprouted
But I am sure
That in time

It’s becoming impossible
To hide this fact about me
My chest and breasts are always
Sore from keeping the truth in
My halo needs a battery that fits
And a little help to get it going
My chastity is not coming back
And I lack the requisite amount
Of patience and obedience

Once this light inside
Gets out it will torch bright
It will burn up the night
Burn out eyes
Burn away shadows
Burn away the pain
Burn away the doubts
Burn away the trauma
And you won’t see my Adam’s apple anymore
Or the permanent stubble on my chin
And I will say fear not

Like all the angels mentioned
I am occasionally misgendered as male
But everyone knows angels aren’t male
Angels were the first trans women
Built to be perfect and the most actualized
Of all the other beings
Like Lucifer
Like Venus
Like the anthropomorphism
Of intuition and a feeling
That everything will be ok

It’s difficult to imagine
Trans people as angels
When so many of our bodies
are washing up in rivers
and ridiculed and legislated
and targeted and scrutinized
and marginalized and despised
and diseased and murdered
and dashed upon sharp rocks
and lying dead from depression
with gunshot wounds to our heads

Like the morning star
It’s hard to come out at night
But I will be waiting
At dawn to redirect the sun’s rays
And his balled up masculinity
I’ll aim it straight into the shadows
I’ll aim it straight back at the men
And at the casters of stones

Once my wings finally grow in
I will ascend and bring light
To this crushing darkness
Instead of condemned
Banished and God damned

Like The Insides Of A Piano

I am the knotted insides of a piano
I sound how my guts are strung up
Sometimes elegant like the way antelope run
Or a wand of winter sculpting snow into drifts
Sometimes awful like bones snapping under flesh
Lost in mazes, squished under moving coffin lids
Rushing aimlessly, belching dinosaur dreams
Like antediluvian chants that never found their god
Or even a safe place or the right body to take respite
Or like the sound from a dying rabbit when I was 8
After my cousin crushed its skull against a fence post
Out of tune and off time and out of pace and place

I am the frayed insides of a broken piano
Once upon a midsummer’s still of the night
My pianist was a rapist with a gun to my back
My fall board breached and my lid forced ajar
I heard the ghouls’ smiles shuffling in the black
Clamoring for a first row seat in this dimly lit lot
Maybe if I lied perfectly still he will be done quick
I focused on just keeping it together for a better time
But instead I laughed through his impromptu piece
I wanted to turn his moonlight sonata into rhapsody
Or strike a wonky note consistently sharp or flat
Into anything else or just something unplayable

I am the insides of a lavish spruce grand piano
Resonating clouds purring across my electric sky
Despite feeling like a moving target or a statistic
I smile. I am not what you think I am or what I do
Both my names are prisons, rooms I can not leave
“Tranny” is probably what you are thinking anyways
I am the insides of a goddess glowing like the moon
Her voice coaxed out a naked raw no longer afraid
I can’t help it if my audience doesn’t get it or can’t hear
I play through the hisses, boos and the genuine applause
I’m the bridges, tuning pins and agraffs of a concert piano
Orchestrated and hidden like a soft serenade in the dark

Born Shy

When the other kids used to run around
chasing tails, and bouncing spheres
I would sit for hours in the dark outside
Staring at goddesses disguised as shadows
Imagining their silhouettes as placentas
And how they’d feel still attached to me
All my heroines were misfits, cowgirls
famous actresses’ faces and matching clouds

I’d watch how birds and cats talk and act
Taking notes from them on their how-to’s
Move, adapt and survive amongst humans
Then imagine them as my only friends
My best lovers were never actually there
I live on the wrong side of the frosted glass
Of a Norman Rockwell doctor visit painting
And the museum security staff roping it off

I am the stirred guts of a snow globe
A quaquaversal crack tumbling down its sky
Like my fear of God’s judgement, lightning
Funnel clouds, dimly lit backs of parking lots
And the ascending pitch of pop bottle rockets
I envy crows, octopuses and flowers from graves
I begged ancient statues in mountains to come alive
To take my hand and skip me past my one horse town
I’d say just enough to hitch a ride already plotting
A way to convince them to drop me off once away

I am a dreidel spun out under Christmas trees
sparklers and shooting firefly singing tinsel
Sung hymns of madness that come believing
I need to fix the wreckage of impossibilities
My shyness feels like a string tethered to a kite
Its cold fingers coiling and choking my heart
Some days I feel like it is going to rip
it straight out of my pounding chest
And when the winds die down
the only thing keeping it aloft
is the promise of a new day
and a chance to speak up

Words: Cara Feral

Undetonated

I wake up to the sound
of an emergency broadcast
Rubbing my sleepy eyes
Peering past them
in total disbelief
Like a half asleep
scared latchkey kid
whose hometown
just burned down
Like back in 1979
I watched an F3 tornado
from my friend’s window
Hang, draw and quarter
the northside of Cheyenne
We learned to duck and cover
when the warning siren
screamed bloody murder
Under the imminent threat
of Russia dropping bombs
All the promise of a cold war
that never ever heated up
No death from above
Save an occasional twister
We only had so much time
Before the button was pressed
Mutually assured destruction
They once teased
So I did what I wanted
I played live music in clubs
Back when that was still a thing
I hiked thousands of miles
Never thought about tomorrow
Now all I think about is rent
As I star in a marginal role
Of a slow motion reenactment
At my day after day suicide
Working a shitty job
I am an abandoned atom
Brutally split at the seams
I’m Hiroshima’s spilled drink
Or a dropped nuclear bomb
That instead of exploding
Somehow got caught
Undetonated and buried
Like the fallout of a dream

Words: Cara Feral
Photo: 1951 AP File

Island Of Misfit Kids

I once told you that I would be the
toad to your frog if you didn’t mind
eating wet sandwiches with me
I would have told you I had a decoder
and a phone in my shoe if it meant
that you would love me like a spy
Turned out I don’t like to be shaken
or stirred, I am a spilled cup of coffee
Pitch black like the insides of a coffin
Or the endless nights of grim horror
that come with watching our embryo
slip down a periwinkle shower drain
Dead baby sparrows and rotting deer
carcasses never bothered me before
Now I want to crawl between my knees
like they taught us when the bomb dropped
I just want to sew up this split atom
Swoop up all the fallen beaks and wings
Sail into the sun, tear down heaven’s gate
Cast out all the perfect angels and gods
Burn their eyes with cigarette butts
Invite the island of misfit toys inside
Make right the train with square wheels,
the swimming bird, and my lifeless doll

Nostalgia Is Like Herpes

The city is calm tonight
Only rustling leaves
and splayed knees
creaking between dumpsters
Stranded and dangling
From piss stained blankets
Sleeping on sidewalks
Like crime scene outlines
Drawn by angry chalk
of the poor and addicted

Dreaming of better days
Back when they were bankers
plumbers, dads, and teachers
Shopkeepers, wives, harpists
Married maybe even still in love
Back when they held parties
baked cookies, took baths
Smelled floral like the scent
of fancy perfume sample ads
lodged between pages
of better lives through yoga
Organic gardening, and Mademoiselle

Back in the days of before
Still soldiering through fortune
Back when they sent kids to college
And child support to divorcees
And knit dog sweaters for their pets
Back when music still ruled
Like a Rush concert
Or the tangled lullabies
Of cowboy boots, smoky bars
And the spirit of honky tonk
Rubbed up against jukeboxes
Belt buckles and back seats
Back when people smiled
in the time of first kisses
Hosted large public gatherings
During the time of Technicolor
And Tricky Dicky’s blathering
Back when Elvis swung hips
Nothing was sung online
Except Bob
Who was the first
to plug in

Nostalgia is like herpes
The more we get screwed
The bigger the chance
We’ll find a reminder of it later
If I can just get through this….
I’ll see my Mom again
I won’t have to wear a mask again
I’ll dance at a crowded bar again
I can take a shower again
I’ll have a house again
I’ll have a job again
Life will be normal

Never again.

Words By Cara Feral
Artwork by Noah Rehan

Honeycomb Pageantry

He’s drowning
Way out there
Unconformed
And cast out
Clinging to life
on jilted preservers
and buoyant vagaries

He watched them
With wings silenced
Buzzing around moons
and golden parallelograms
Little gods saving their Queen
with measured provisions
in dance steps and ritual

Sometimes at night
Her majesty would sing to them
“America the Beautiful”
in frenzied consonants
cackled in pixels that
light up and glow
with a quarter of July

He fell in with a murder
of high wind crows
that liked plotting revenge
while flying in place
over steeple bent churches,
Starbucks obelisks,
crooked beaks, and carrion

Her palace collapsed
Like a mini civilization
Amidst flapping wings
undulating in perfect pitch
along a downward,
spiralling trajectory
and a fusillade of rifle shots

Boom! Sunk her palace
with its burning rat bones,
rigored syntax,
dearth of touch,
blanched pickets,
dead wasps, pomp,
and honeycombed pageantry

Legend had it skewed;
they said the killer
was unteachable, deranged
A poor shoo fly
with clipped wings
Suspended in uncertainty
and honey covered principle

But I know for a fact
He was just a tired drone
Cut off, marginalized
Fed up and used out
Armed to the thorax
with a shit ton of apathy
and a semi-automatic

My Hands…

Grasped thumbs
Cupped breasts
Rattled shakes
Played with dolls
Bounced balls
Jumped rope
Reached for love
Clung to sun
Prayed to gods
Covered ears
Washed dishes
Pumped iron
Raced cars
Fingered bass
Aced tests
Painted graffiti
Cracked pencils
Tore letters
Built dreams
Broke windows
Flicked lighters
Massaged backs
Rocked venues
Tugged leashes
Clapped applause
Squeezed necks
Punched clocks
Wrapped gifts
Bagged peaks
Held rain
Drew water
Poured beers
Twisted caps
Spun bottles
Struck teeth
Rolled joints
Tilted shots
Carried caskets
Danced on stage
Hugged trees
Blazed trails
Sculpted cairns
Cut wrists
Folded napkins
Hit walls
Painted interiors
Sketched pads
Pleaded mercy
Caressed steel
Pulled triggers
Pet cats
Smote bugs
Pointed down
Swiped left
Blurred genders
Changed names
Stayed the course
Slipped on dresses
Buttoned shirts
Ripped out knees
Zipped up tents
Healed birds
Tickled feet
Melted hearts
Shoveled graves
Closed wounds
Opened books
Locked doors
Clasped ties
Slapped bags
Hitched rides
Played games
Texted hookups
Waved for help
Stoked fires
Rolled dice
Typed chapters
Smashed drums
Pinched butts
Picked berries
Fed mouths
Pushed carts
Yanked weeds
Clutched ropes
Wrote a poem.


Words By ©Cara Feral
Photo By ©Cara Feral

Armistice

We aren’t afraid of a fast barreling train
Of steel and steam coming down the line
Yet fear the fear of things make believe
Like the “or else…” if you decline to ride

The railroad gauge is a shoulders length apart
Just ask all the dead and Chinese immigrants
Their ballasts of fleshy canvas tanned dreams
Stretched into a harness and bitter leather bit

An arranged treatise between the plowshare
The farmer and the whinnying horse between
The art of the deal signed amidst circling lions
Whipped to terms and brokered by ye cat o’ nines

It’s an absurd comic skit straight from vaudeville
Culminating in a black and white Christmas scene
The villain with the 500 dollar tie, the carrot stick
The damsel, the distress, and hero fashionably late

Most things are done way too much like working
And the way old people’s faces grow into frowns
Versus things that aren’t done enough like hugs
And the way a sprout knows only to reach for sun

I can tell when somebody never worked a long day
They avert my gaze like I’m Medusa giving them head
They stand frozen like a stone statue or paper weight
In offices with degrees and pictures of fish once caught

Proud proof over storm, claw, PDD, divorce and college
Sweet victory Perseus! You reeled in the mighty Cetus!
From backs of beast, yacht and lines off hookers cracks
Come ye magpies feast upon entrails off laborers’ backs

Jobs are just a nervous glance, and a .357 under the desk
And the wafting smoke snaking out from bosses’ mouths
Memorialize this armistice between slave and charioteer
The rich few riding and the millions broken and run down

Prelude To Winter

I remember the way my eyes changed
When she told me she was going away
There is only so much time for love
She said before making her getaway
Like watching blood spill across snow
Before gathering its tinder and fuel
Caching its twigs deep within my chest
Saving them until spring to light aglow

When time crowns the winter as king
And sends out his sons Nyx and Hypnos
Even the trees give offering to darkness
Molting velvety summer jade dresses
Shedding naked their fluttering voices
My fragile flickering candlelight of hope
Pursued by mad packs of fang bared growl
As I dream of your face and angelic glow

So far away from now

Words: Cara Feral
Photography: Cara Feral

It’s Not All Doom And Gloom

Cops push out addicts
Living under bridges
Then talk them down
From jumping off them
Suicide rates are leaping
But it’s not all bad news
At least the stock market
Reached another high

Welcome to the new norm
Please distract in place
The CEO of Pfizer just sold
His shares for 5.6 million
On news of a fabulous jab
While outside my window
I saw a guy find salvation
Inside another kind of stab

Clean air, trees, and animals
Live more inside memories
Than anywhere else now
Once the polar ice caps melt
It’ll be another place to drill
But it’s not all doom and gloom
Elon’s gonna save the world
By sending man out to mars

Creativity tilled to vacant lots
Where kids used to play tag
Games like hopscotch or jacks
Red rover and capture the flag
Lone statues of imagination
Rotting in teenage wastelands
This is the zombie apocalypse
Without a single shot fired

Millions with no food or homes
Even more without any work
Yet everyone owns a phone
Why do you think the Nazis
Gave every family a radio?
But it’s not all doom and gloom
Sony came out with the PS5
Jails come with joysticks now


Poetry By: Cara Feral
Image By: Steve Cutts

Good News

I am thrilled to announce that three of my poems have been accepted into an upcoming publication called, Creation and the Cosmos: A Poetic Anthology Inspired by Nature by Raw Earth Ink!!! This book is set to be published winter of 2020/2021. Her blog is awesome as well, and I encourage those who don’t already follow her to do so at https://taracaribou.com/.

I will provide more details once it is completed and ready for sale.
My many thanks and appreciation to Tara!
This will be the first time seeing my poetry in an actual book. And I am giddy as hell about it.

Here is one of my poems that will be included.

The Lepidopterist’s Muse

She fell upon my hardcover
book on the lives of caterpillars
from a wispy cedar tree burl
I scared away an excited robin
and some boys with fishing poles
I watched her crawl back and forth
doing a 50 leg two step on my arm
She began to weave a golden chrysalis
forged in the loom of transformation
Someday soon she will emerge
unfettered in chaotic trajectories
Draped in winged coruscation
like an angelic stowaway
tucked safely inside
Buddha’s hip pocket

Image: taken from Pinterest no copyright infringement is intended

The Pendulum

As above
So below

As is love
So is hell

As is ritual
So is chaos

As is truth
So is masked

As is beauty
So is plastic

As is art
So is war

As is heaven
So is work

As is wonder
So is reason

As is steel
So is skin

As is soul
So is body

As is earth
So is sun

As is birth
So is time

No. 13

They are onto us so let’s hide away
Inside hidden fox-holed motel floors
Intentionally mislabeled as room 14’s
We can take respite inside conch shells
And spiraling sunflower inflorescence
There’s a theomachy being waged
Between logic and the imaginary
They march infantries of symmetry
Illuminated by torch lit superstition
Mandating even numbered divisibility

They say they want to do away with you
They malign you as the Devil’s number
They ridicule you and degrade your sum
They’ve quit naming building levels by you
They banish you like black hue cat fur
Then stake paths under ladders as taboo
They impugn you, chide you as a betrayer
But even if they refuse to utter your name
We know you are calculating and implicit
There is no way to longevity and fortune

Without counting the number thirteen

Election Day


Every four years there’s this sporting event
Preceded by campaign promises and vows of roses
We choose our bread, circuses and the president
We mark our ballots while holding our noses

Like the spectacle of a matador at a corrida
Dirt gets kicked up in front of a confused bull
The bullfighter starts a dance waving his muleta
Obscuring his sword covering our eyes with wool

Bulls are colorblind, he wears red to hide the blood
Which is exactly what the electorate wants to see
The candidates debate, argue and start slinging mud
Once the bull hears enough it charges for the nominee

The politician deftly steps aside while waving his cape
He holds out a ballot in one hand while hiding his blade
We see it all the time the rigged game and lack of escape
The matador stabs us in the back the voters betrayed

After all what good is an election without the malice,
The cheering crowds, the spectacle, and the hypocrite?
On election day get in the arena and cast your votes
Let’s make a change to the flavor of the same old shit

%d bloggers like this: