Clockwise Cats: The Prequel
Clockwise Cats: The Prequel is, in fact, the prequel to the Fowlpox-published chapbook, Clockwise Cats. The Prequel contains the grouping of poems in their entirety, while the Fowlpox book contained a smaller selection of the grouping.
Clockwise Cats: The Prequel is, in fact, the prequel to the Fowlpox-published chapbook, Clockwise Cats. The Prequel contains the grouping of poems in their entirety, while the Fowlpox book contained a smaller selection of the grouping.
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THE PREQUEL<br />
ALISON ROSS
<strong>Clockwise</strong> <strong>Cats</strong>: <strong>The</strong> <strong>Prequel</strong><br />
Alison Ross<br />
2016 All Rights Reserved Alison Ross<br />
Published by Feline and Nothingness Press
<strong>Clockwise</strong> <strong>Cats</strong>:<br />
by Alison Ross<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Prequel</strong><br />
<strong>Cats</strong> inhabit their own time and space continuum<br />
- that is to say, they transcend time and space as<br />
we know them. <strong>The</strong> clockwise cat, therefore, is<br />
“wise” to clocks - she knows they exist as an<br />
attempt to “capture” something irritatingly<br />
abstract and elusive. <strong>The</strong> clockwise cat, abstract<br />
and elusive herself, and being suspicious of<br />
clocks, can therefore live as she wishes - typically<br />
in a counter-clockwise - i.e., timeless - fashion.<br />
Indeed, most of us would choose to reincarnate<br />
into feline form if offered the option; we covet<br />
cats' ability to conquer the clock, as it were,<br />
because our lives are so mired in these<br />
maddening measurements of time, even as we are<br />
fully vigilant of the concept as pure contrivance.<br />
To that end, I present a chapbook of time-themed<br />
verse. Each poem, in some way, whether<br />
explicitly or implicitly, touches on time as an<br />
enigmatic construct as opposed to an orthodox,<br />
fixed and solid entity. Some poems seem to mock<br />
clocks and time, whereas others are concerned<br />
with the concept only tangentially, and yet their<br />
aim is patent: demolish all clocks, and emancipate
us from the constraints of the insidious invention<br />
of time.<br />
Felines are inherently poetic with their<br />
graceful gait and mercurial moods and<br />
mischievous moves, and they are also innately<br />
timeless, savvy to the clock's devious ways;<br />
therefore, each poem is its own "clockwise cat."<br />
This chapbook contains 24 poems, published<br />
between 2006-2013, and acts as the “prequel” to<br />
the venerable Fowlpox Press-published <strong>Clockwise</strong><br />
<strong>Cats</strong>, released in 2014, and which contained a<br />
small selection from this larger grouping.
I want to be a surrealist painting<br />
I want to be a surrealist painting.<br />
I want to have flowers for fangs.<br />
I want to exist only as the aborted shadow of your shrieking<br />
eyes.<br />
I want to be a pop art painting.<br />
I want to be replicated for 15 minutes<br />
in the form of a Campbell’s Tomato Soup can<br />
going “rat-a-tat-tat.”<br />
I want to lick ten steins.<br />
I want to be a Rodin sculpture.<br />
I want to be eternally kissed<br />
under the gates of hell.<br />
I want to exist<br />
as the shadow of a kiss<br />
for the first 15 minutes<br />
of a replicated eternity.<br />
(Black Heart Magazine 2011)
Miro’s ennui<br />
Miro's ennui shook the foundations of time.<br />
It isolated lethargy in a continuum of shadows.<br />
Miro's ennui shocked the universe sublime.<br />
It isolated apathy in a spectrum of windows.<br />
Miro's ennui<br />
created a hierarchy of shadows<br />
that shocked a spectrum of apathy<br />
into a lethargy of windows<br />
(Black Heart Magazine 2011)
A Brief History of the Deconstruction of Time<br />
<strong>The</strong> devil waves his magic wand and three miniature skeletons<br />
resting in an oversized coffin dance to life.<br />
<strong>The</strong> skeletons leave the coffin in search of happiness. <strong>The</strong> first<br />
skeleton climbs a ladder made of smoke. <strong>The</strong> second skeleton<br />
jumps up a rope made of sleep. <strong>The</strong> third skeleton scales the<br />
coffin using his bare hands.<br />
<strong>The</strong> first skeleton wants to keep climbing to the moon. <strong>The</strong><br />
second skeleton desires to feel the rain on her face. <strong>The</strong> third<br />
skeleton aspires to attain equilibrium.<br />
<strong>The</strong> first skeleton says to the second skeleton, "If you come with<br />
me, you can bathe in the tears from the moon."<br />
<strong>The</strong> second skeleton says to the third skeleton, "If you come with<br />
me, you can drink the tears from the moon."<br />
So the three skeletons climb the ladder of smoke all the way up<br />
to the moon. It takes them 666 hours divided by 2 with a square<br />
root of 3.<br />
<strong>The</strong> first skeleton lies down on the moon to rest. <strong>The</strong> moon<br />
begins to cry quietly. <strong>The</strong> second skeleton bathes her face in the<br />
moon's weeping. <strong>The</strong> third skeleton imbibes a goblet of the<br />
moon's tears.<br />
<strong>The</strong> moon, dried of her tears, dissolves into a cloud, and the<br />
skeletons fall back to earth.
<strong>The</strong> first skeleton's bones splinter into tiny luminous globes. <strong>The</strong><br />
second skeleton's bones melt into mist.<br />
<strong>The</strong> third skeleton's bones assemble themselves into a ladder<br />
that he scales in his sleep all the way up to the sky. <strong>The</strong>re he<br />
meets the devil resting in a coffin made of clouds, waving his<br />
smoke-filled wand, as the moon dances back to life.<br />
(Mad Hatter’s Review 2012)
Anachronistic anarchist<br />
<strong>The</strong> anachronistic anarchist<br />
uses post-it notes<br />
to remind herself<br />
of her dinner date<br />
with the sun.<br />
But the sun<br />
has a cold<br />
and sends a rain check<br />
that bounces<br />
into a<br />
reverse<br />
black<br />
hole.<br />
<strong>The</strong> anachronistic anarchist<br />
sends two gmails a day<br />
to her former self<br />
but they are flagged as spam<br />
and the user is blocked<br />
from<br />
the<br />
future.<br />
<strong>The</strong> anachronistic anarchist<br />
wants to start a revolution<br />
to protest the dictatorship<br />
of synchronicity.<br />
Her identical twin<br />
outlaws coincidence<br />
and abolishes punctuality.
So the anachronistic anarchist<br />
shows up late<br />
to her date<br />
with the sun,<br />
who is covered in post-it notes<br />
about the revolution<br />
against<br />
the<br />
anarchy<br />
of<br />
space.<br />
(Calliope Nerve 2011)
misanthropic Buddha<br />
misanthropic Buddha<br />
eats black balloons for breakfast<br />
drinks cocktails made of storms<br />
Misanthropic buddha<br />
gets his zen on<br />
at 3:04 am<br />
kicks the assess of the stars<br />
that are not aligned<br />
and karate chops<br />
the moon<br />
misanthropic buddha<br />
makes love to Dante's corpse<br />
peels the layers of hell off his shoe<br />
haunts Che in his dreams<br />
licks fascism with his tongue<br />
<strong>The</strong> Misanthropic Buddha<br />
gets drunk on skulls<br />
drives a nail through Jesus' eyes<br />
(they bleed static<br />
and he cries)<br />
(Word Riot 2008)
cryptic nihilistic<br />
the cryptic nihilist<br />
wears purple shades<br />
that see into yer soul<br />
and she can read your mind<br />
with a magnifying glass<br />
the cryptic nihilist<br />
has been to hell and back<br />
she said it was a nice trip<br />
and the devil was friendly enough<br />
but when she got home<br />
she was so thirsty<br />
she drank a gallon of water<br />
and then turned into jesus<br />
the cryptic nihilist<br />
stays up for all hours<br />
listening to classical music in reverse<br />
and translating kierkegaard<br />
into lolspeak<br />
cuz OMG WTF: dude is deep!<br />
the cryptic nihilist<br />
once met buddha on the road<br />
but before she could kill him<br />
he burst into flames<br />
he briefly reincarnated into<br />
a jug of wine<br />
so she could drink away the pain<br />
but she laughed<br />
and smashed a mirror instead
she considers herself a neo-cryptic nihilistic freak. she believes<br />
in god (but only as an acronym that will self-destruct in five<br />
minutes). she wraps herself in the confederate flag, lynches<br />
conformity, then recites the pledge of allegiance in technicolor<br />
tongues.<br />
the cryptic nihilist once scrawled graffiti on the white house<br />
that read: "rearranging chaos is partly why i'm here."<br />
(Battered Suitcase 2010)
Miro’s mirror<br />
Miro’s mirror reflected the skeleton of chaos.<br />
It deconstructed time and made a maze through space.<br />
Miro’s mirror wept suns at Rimbaud’s funeral<br />
and wrote cumming’s epitaph with the blood of commas.<br />
Miro’s mirror gouged out Shakespeare’s eyes.<br />
It pre-saged the death of poetry<br />
and fought World War II in reverse.<br />
Miro’s mirror cracked in half.<br />
<strong>The</strong> left half reflected "Spring Song" played by Dr. Seuss.<br />
<strong>The</strong> right half showed the Buddha in the throes of cacophony.<br />
Miro’s mirror deconstructed chaos and made a maze through<br />
Rimbaud’s heart.<br />
(Disingenuous Twaddle 2011)
Buddhaliciously Blasphemous<br />
<strong>The</strong> Buddha is big and blasphemous<br />
he wants you to rip out yer tongue<br />
and take a vow of silent retribution<br />
against the winds<br />
(of change)<br />
<strong>The</strong> Buddha is smiling and blasphemous<br />
he wants you to mock the Catholic priests<br />
and take a real vow of celibacy<br />
(but you can fondle the dharma if you wish)<br />
<strong>The</strong> Buddha is big and delicious.<br />
He eats ephemera for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.<br />
But he wants you to fast for the rest of your karmic lives.<br />
(Counterexample Poetics 2011)
Negate Tyme<br />
aka the riddles<br />
<strong>The</strong> riddles speak to me with invisible tongues<br />
and utter wordless verse about transparent oblivions.<br />
<strong>The</strong> riddles speak to me in equations of rhyme<br />
that Einstein solves while traveling back in time<br />
<strong>The</strong> riddles speak to me in scrambled Sanskrit<br />
foretelling the future of Latin on obsolete planets.<br />
<strong>The</strong> riddles are riddled with holy black holes<br />
and splattered with the rainbows of gravity<br />
<strong>The</strong> equations speak to me in riddles of rhyme<br />
chanting Tibetan Latin in transparent tongues<br />
in an invisible oblivion solved by obsolete magicians.<br />
(Eviscerator Heaven 2011)
Eternity found<br />
My days have been infernal feasts of fire and delight; I have not<br />
censored myself but lived loudly and boldly, blazing through<br />
dim apathies and carving diamond paths through gruesome<br />
nights. I have invented enigmas and flattened paradigms; I have<br />
twisted through the labyrinth of myself and made my heart<br />
invisible.<br />
Now as my days wane, I float through the gardens that inflame<br />
my senses. I imagine flowers that wrap their blue arms around<br />
me, and suffocate me with their shrouded scents.<br />
My funeral will be an hallucination of hymns and poisons; wines<br />
will flow and hearts will sing. Guests will celebrate the sordid<br />
epiphanies of my life: the euphoria of my birth, the rapture of<br />
my death.<br />
I have offered myself to the world; I have sacrificed myself to<br />
the sun, and laughed heartily at the moon. <strong>The</strong> gods have loved<br />
me, and opened the heavens in my honor.<br />
I enter; the feast has begun again.<br />
(Wings of Icarus 2007)
Death is imminent and I'm still smiling<br />
It's raining cats and clocks.<br />
I drink an entire bottle of dreams (vintage 1919)<br />
and drift down a road made of smoke.<br />
<strong>The</strong> umbrella of my imagination<br />
flies away<br />
flies away.<br />
I am in no hurry to die.<br />
My smile blooms<br />
like a cyst.<br />
Further down the road<br />
I meet the phantom of myself.<br />
I say hello and she laughs.<br />
I smother her with my raincoat.<br />
She wilts like a wounded smile.<br />
Sleep waves to me with its green hand.<br />
I gulp down a flask of smoke,<br />
and fall toward the clouds<br />
erasing themselves from my memory.<br />
I knock on the sky<br />
and no one answers<br />
except for the stars<br />
except for the stars<br />
(Wings of Icarus 2007)
Salvador Dalai Lama<br />
Salvador Dalai Lama paints mandalas of melting clocks. <strong>The</strong><br />
clock hands meditate, in lotus position, on the idea of temporal<br />
ephemerality, then burst into flames of "o mani padme om," a<br />
chant that mimics the humming of an electric appliance.<br />
Salvador Dalai Lama dreams he was a mustache in a previous<br />
life. As a mustache, he abused the faces of men and accrued<br />
negative karma, causing him to morph into an elephant with<br />
spindly legs.<br />
Salvador Dalai Lama always hated being an elephant, so he<br />
shaves his head in rebellion. His head as shiny as an eternity of<br />
funhouse mirrors that reflect reality as it truly is: a<br />
mustachioed monk who paints melting mandalas on a landscape<br />
of reincarnated alarm clocks that meditate on the idea of<br />
temporal frivolity, then burst into sparks of sun that only<br />
imagine they exist.<br />
(Cerebral Catalyst 2007)
Silent symmetry<br />
I crave internal symmetry.<br />
I want to drink liquid sutras<br />
smoke mirrors<br />
and exhale samsara<br />
I want to poison all clocks<br />
and regurgitate infinity<br />
I want to dream of monks<br />
who shout chants shaped like birds<br />
I want to sleep inside a scream<br />
I want to breathe clouds filled with comas<br />
and choke on karmas made of cats<br />
I want to silence all hallucinations<br />
and blind all hymns<br />
I want to die inside symmetry of birds.<br />
(Blue Fifth Review 2006)
A cat stalks through the voluptuous mazes of my mind.<br />
I caress her and she purrs,<br />
releasing gardens<br />
teeming with karmic flowers.<br />
I pluck the flowers and reincarnate<br />
into a memory of water.<br />
(Menagerie 2009)
Hours<br />
<strong>The</strong> hours rain down<br />
like soft sparkling skulls.<br />
<strong>The</strong> children catch them on their tongues,<br />
eat them like they’re stars,<br />
and become illuminated time.<br />
(Counterexample Poetics 2011)
Miro’s scream<br />
Miro’s scream became a new color of crayon.<br />
His scream unfurled across the middle of eternity,<br />
spattering the sky<br />
with colors the shape of centuries,<br />
and shapes the color of oblivion.<br />
His scream cast a shadow onto the pavement of the sun,<br />
climbed up the staircase of the moon,<br />
and erased every star.<br />
Miro’s scream ripped open like a red yawn,<br />
and lullabies fluttered out like blue bats.<br />
Miro’s scream became locked inside itself:<br />
Miro had swallowed the key to eternity,<br />
and oblivion unfurled like a new color of crayon.<br />
(Cerebral Catalyst 2006)
Invisible twilight<br />
Dusk dreams herself into being: the sun swallows itself whole,<br />
spits out slivers of lunatic light; an unknown hand scribbles<br />
graffiti of sightless eyes upon a mangled mask.<br />
<strong>The</strong> trees with their many quivering tongues speak a terror of<br />
truth to the wind. Birds weave a maze of melody, and cats stalk<br />
invented shadows.<br />
Time bursts into tiny spiders who coil white shadows to snare<br />
snatches of twilight. <strong>The</strong> spiders gulp their prey, and grow<br />
plump with darkness.<br />
Starved spiders shrivel, and dawn screams himself awake,<br />
flinging blood-stained shrouds over a memory of mad moons<br />
and impossible twilights.<br />
(Counterexample Poetics 2011)
Coma<br />
<strong>The</strong> clocks weep an ennui of tears.<br />
<strong>The</strong> black hour spills<br />
through the eyes of the house<br />
and strokes me with sleep-poisoned fingers.<br />
<strong>The</strong> chimera licks me with her languid tongue:<br />
I drown in dreams.<br />
<strong>The</strong> clocks weep a euphoria of tears.<br />
<strong>The</strong> white hour yawns<br />
spilling pearls onto my sleep-fingered eyes.<br />
I do not awaken<br />
and I do not die.<br />
(Medulla Review 2011)
Miro’s Nightmare<br />
Miro’s Nightmare is coming to get you.<br />
It crawls into your mouth<br />
to lay eggs<br />
that hatch into dreams<br />
of murderous blue.<br />
Miro’s Nightmare bleeds cats onto your eyes<br />
and whispers fangs into your ears.<br />
Miro’s Nightmare is an upside-down clock<br />
and an inside-out heart.<br />
It is in love with death<br />
the scent of blood-streaked mirrors,<br />
and with the color yellow<br />
when it used to be black.<br />
Miro’s Nightmare is coming to get you.<br />
It lays clocks inside your heart:<br />
they hatch into cats<br />
with upside-down eyes.<br />
(Haggard and Halloo 2009)
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Clockwise</strong> Cat<br />
<strong>The</strong> clockwise cat<br />
is wise to clocks.<br />
She knows their motive:<br />
to tame the savage animal of time.<br />
<strong>The</strong> clockwise cat<br />
hisses at the clock-cages;<br />
her fangs gnaw the numbers<br />
and her claws rip holes<br />
in the frayed fabric of space.<br />
<strong>The</strong> clockwise cat<br />
moves in counter-clockwise cadences<br />
across the hardwood floors of infinity.<br />
She stalks illusions of impermanence<br />
which flit like shadows<br />
across the paint-chipped walls in her mind.<br />
<strong>The</strong> clockwise cat<br />
tells time with her eyes:<br />
they blaze like candle flames<br />
in the dim closets of oblivion.<br />
<strong>The</strong> clockwise cat<br />
sleeps 16 days an hour.<br />
She dreams about the minutes<br />
she will devour like bugs;<br />
she awakens to seconds<br />
poisoned like rats.<br />
(Cerebral Catalyst 2006)
We two<br />
(for Franc)<br />
We two<br />
move backwards in time<br />
receding towards oceans<br />
dripping magic curses from our tongues<br />
and spilling flowers from our mouths<br />
We two<br />
rearrange the alphabet<br />
dismantling vowels into hieroglyphics of sound<br />
speaking multi-colored syllables<br />
and bleeding language from our eyes<br />
We two<br />
scatter numbers to the wind<br />
decorating the sky with an arithmetic of stars<br />
smashing the clouds into silent symbols<br />
and making shapes from the wind<br />
We two<br />
swim in reverse seas<br />
speak strange syllables<br />
and subtract the stars<br />
from the geometries of wind<br />
(Laika Poetry Review 2006)
Clocktocracy<br />
<strong>The</strong>re once was a network of autocratic Clocks<br />
who with their terrible ticks and terrifying tocks<br />
tyrannized the villages of Infinity<br />
<strong>The</strong>re once was a network of guerilla Watches<br />
who rose up in the jungles of Paradoxes<br />
to fight the dominion of the Clock despots<br />
But the demonic Clocks<br />
smashed every paradox<br />
into an infinity of diminutive watches<br />
(Counterexample Poetics 2012)
Time tricks<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are time tricks that will make your head spin.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was the time that time did a backflip and we landed<br />
upside down and we had to stand on our heads for 20 days. <strong>The</strong><br />
blood rush made us hallucinate images of bathtubs overflowing<br />
with melted skulls.<br />
And there was the time that time entered thru our subconscious<br />
and stole all of the mirrors inside and sold them for scrap.<br />
And then there was the time that time came waltzing in to our<br />
math class to make fun of our ineptness at calculations. That<br />
was when we said, "Fuck you, time" and flung out the door. And<br />
then suddenly we were in a hallway filled with walking algebraic<br />
equations, jeering at us.<br />
Time tricks will melt yer skull, and your subconscious fear of<br />
math will mock you in the cracked mirror at the End of Time.<br />
(Zombie Logic Review 2013)
Toxic dyslexic<br />
by Alison Ross<br />
<strong>The</strong> toxic dyslexic<br />
reads arabic with one eye closed<br />
<strong>The</strong> toxic dyslexic<br />
eats scrambled clocks<br />
for a midnite snack<br />
and regurgitates the greek alphabet<br />
the toxic dyslexic<br />
reads pythagoras<br />
upside down<br />
and dreams<br />
of bats<br />
in escher's house of angels<br />
the toxic dyslexic<br />
asphyxiates syllables<br />
and chops them up<br />
into fake algorithms<br />
the disexlyc xotic<br />
drinks hemlock through a straw<br />
and dies of illiteracy<br />
(Zombie Logic Review 2013)
About the Author:<br />
<strong>Clockwise</strong> Cat publisher and editor Alison Ross has been<br />
published here, there, elsewhere and nowhere. She<br />
experienced rave-levels of ecstasy when she found out<br />
she was shortlisted for the 2014 Erbacce Prize among<br />
20 others, down from 5,000 entries. She was also<br />
giddily bemused when was nominated for the Best of the<br />
Net a few years back, though she lost out to savvier<br />
scribes. Alison’s poesie will subvert your dissonant<br />
dystopia into a euphonious utopia of Zen-Surrealist<br />
bliss.
Order <strong>Clockwise</strong> <strong>Cats</strong> from Fowlpox Press:
CLOCKWISE CATS: THE<br />
PREQUEL
CLOCKWISE PRAISE<br />
With language that is recognizable in the unique version of hearing<br />
something very specific (think Miles Davis’ or <strong>The</strong>lonious Monk’s<br />
sounds), Alison Ross’ poems can be pulled from a lineup very<br />
easily. Her <strong>Clockwise</strong> <strong>Cats</strong> <strong>The</strong> <strong>Prequel</strong> is a collection of poetry that<br />
builds mirrors onto and within her language that continuously<br />
echoes and redefines itself, simultaneously. This “time-themed”<br />
volume is both coherent and whimsical and demonstrates Ross’<br />
focused playfulness among her unique images. This collection is<br />
directional toward blending relatable experience with the exclusive<br />
creativity that shapes each poem’s deliberate goal: to alter the<br />
reader’s understanding. Ross has created a wondrous foundation for<br />
her readers here. – Felino Soriano<br />
<strong>Clockwise</strong> <strong>Cats</strong>: <strong>The</strong> <strong>Prequel</strong><br />
Alison Ross<br />
2016 All Rights Reserved Alison Ross<br />
Published by Feline and Nothingness Press