Clockwise Cat Strikes Back

Cirque des Cercles
By Richard King Perkins II
Like a vein of gold, you left me
in the center of forgotten, still to miss
the rise of trivia. Alleys blotted
with dusk’s red trifles. Yet it wasn’t the
swaths of cinnabar collapsing in the fireplace
that stilled us. Bright prisons followed us
everywhere— except when we needed
them most.
The cirque des cercles on the
stitched rug are openings to an underworld.
The longest darkness. Creatures forming
from the demon’s molten feet in the eons
after Damascus appeared above the earth.
An age of whale chant rising like slabs
on the strand. But the day’s first child
cries out the simplest man’s name into the sky.
Such a mind; a gateway to the clouds.
Perpetual reiver, break me into timelessness,
for the will perseveres in its completeness
rather than its fragmentation. Then the moon
leaves off and the rug swallows down remnants
of gold and bone. The deepening of essentials.
Promenades swathed in dawn’s great monument.
Left alone in unending expanses of pitch white
freedom— even when we needed it least.
Because I was always your slave.
And you were always mine.
Author bio: Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care
facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL with his wife and daughter. He is a three-time Pushcart and
a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.