Clockwise Cats: The Prequel

THE PREQUEL
ALISON ROSS

Clockwise Cats: The Prequel
Alison Ross
2016 All Rights Reserved Alison Ross
Published by Feline and Nothingness Press

Clockwise Cats:
by Alison Ross
The Prequel
Cats inhabit their own time and space continuum
- that is to say, they transcend time and space as
we know them. The clockwise cat, therefore, is
“wise” to clocks - she knows they exist as an
attempt to “capture” something irritatingly
abstract and elusive. The clockwise cat, abstract
and elusive herself, and being suspicious of
clocks, can therefore live as she wishes - typically
in a counter-clockwise - i.e., timeless - fashion.
Indeed, most of us would choose to reincarnate
into feline form if offered the option; we covet
cats' ability to conquer the clock, as it were,
because our lives are so mired in these
maddening measurements of time, even as we are
fully vigilant of the concept as pure contrivance.
To that end, I present a chapbook of time-themed
verse. Each poem, in some way, whether
explicitly or implicitly, touches on time as an
enigmatic construct as opposed to an orthodox,
fixed and solid entity. Some poems seem to mock
clocks and time, whereas others are concerned
with the concept only tangentially, and yet their
aim is patent: demolish all clocks, and emancipate

us from the constraints of the insidious invention
of time.
Felines are inherently poetic with their
graceful gait and mercurial moods and
mischievous moves, and they are also innately
timeless, savvy to the clock's devious ways;
therefore, each poem is its own "clockwise cat."
This chapbook contains 24 poems, published
between 2006-2013, and acts as the “prequel” to
the venerable Fowlpox Press-published Clockwise
Cats, released in 2014, and which contained a
small selection from this larger grouping.

I want to be a surrealist painting
I want to be a surrealist painting.
I want to have flowers for fangs.
I want to exist only as the aborted shadow of your shrieking
eyes.
I want to be a pop art painting.
I want to be replicated for 15 minutes
in the form of a Campbell’s Tomato Soup can
going “rat-a-tat-tat.”
I want to lick ten steins.
I want to be a Rodin sculpture.
I want to be eternally kissed
under the gates of hell.
I want to exist
as the shadow of a kiss
for the first 15 minutes
of a replicated eternity.
(Black Heart Magazine 2011)

Miro’s ennui
Miro's ennui shook the foundations of time.
It isolated lethargy in a continuum of shadows.
Miro's ennui shocked the universe sublime.
It isolated apathy in a spectrum of windows.
Miro's ennui
created a hierarchy of shadows
that shocked a spectrum of apathy
into a lethargy of windows
(Black Heart Magazine 2011)

A Brief History of the Deconstruction of Time
The devil waves his magic wand and three miniature skeletons
resting in an oversized coffin dance to life.
The skeletons leave the coffin in search of happiness. The first
skeleton climbs a ladder made of smoke. The second skeleton
jumps up a rope made of sleep. The third skeleton scales the
coffin using his bare hands.
The first skeleton wants to keep climbing to the moon. The
second skeleton desires to feel the rain on her face. The third
skeleton aspires to attain equilibrium.
The first skeleton says to the second skeleton, "If you come with
me, you can bathe in the tears from the moon."
The second skeleton says to the third skeleton, "If you come with
me, you can drink the tears from the moon."
So the three skeletons climb the ladder of smoke all the way up
to the moon. It takes them 666 hours divided by 2 with a square
root of 3.
The first skeleton lies down on the moon to rest. The moon
begins to cry quietly. The second skeleton bathes her face in the
moon's weeping. The third skeleton imbibes a goblet of the
moon's tears.
The moon, dried of her tears, dissolves into a cloud, and the
skeletons fall back to earth.

The first skeleton's bones splinter into tiny luminous globes. The
second skeleton's bones melt into mist.
The third skeleton's bones assemble themselves into a ladder
that he scales in his sleep all the way up to the sky. There he
meets the devil resting in a coffin made of clouds, waving his
smoke-filled wand, as the moon dances back to life.
(Mad Hatter’s Review 2012)

Anachronistic anarchist
The anachronistic anarchist
uses post-it notes
to remind herself
of her dinner date
with the sun.
But the sun
has a cold
and sends a rain check
that bounces
into a
reverse
black
hole.
The anachronistic anarchist
sends two gmails a day
to her former self
but they are flagged as spam
and the user is blocked
from
the
future.
The anachronistic anarchist
wants to start a revolution
to protest the dictatorship
of synchronicity.
Her identical twin
outlaws coincidence
and abolishes punctuality.

So the anachronistic anarchist
shows up late
to her date
with the sun,
who is covered in post-it notes
about the revolution
against
the
anarchy
of
space.
(Calliope Nerve 2011)

misanthropic Buddha
misanthropic Buddha
eats black balloons for breakfast
drinks cocktails made of storms
Misanthropic buddha
gets his zen on
at 3:04 am
kicks the assess of the stars
that are not aligned
and karate chops
the moon
misanthropic buddha
makes love to Dante's corpse
peels the layers of hell off his shoe
haunts Che in his dreams
licks fascism with his tongue
The Misanthropic Buddha
gets drunk on skulls
drives a nail through Jesus' eyes
(they bleed static
and he cries)
(Word Riot 2008)

cryptic nihilistic
the cryptic nihilist
wears purple shades
that see into yer soul
and she can read your mind
with a magnifying glass
the cryptic nihilist
has been to hell and back
she said it was a nice trip
and the devil was friendly enough
but when she got home
she was so thirsty
she drank a gallon of water
and then turned into jesus
the cryptic nihilist
stays up for all hours
listening to classical music in reverse
and translating kierkegaard
into lolspeak
cuz OMG WTF: dude is deep!
the cryptic nihilist
once met buddha on the road
but before she could kill him
he burst into flames
he briefly reincarnated into
a jug of wine
so she could drink away the pain
but she laughed
and smashed a mirror instead

she considers herself a neo-cryptic nihilistic freak. she believes
in god (but only as an acronym that will self-destruct in five
minutes). she wraps herself in the confederate flag, lynches
conformity, then recites the pledge of allegiance in technicolor
tongues.
the cryptic nihilist once scrawled graffiti on the white house
that read: "rearranging chaos is partly why i'm here."
(Battered Suitcase 2010)

Miro’s mirror
Miro’s mirror reflected the skeleton of chaos.
It deconstructed time and made a maze through space.
Miro’s mirror wept suns at Rimbaud’s funeral
and wrote cumming’s epitaph with the blood of commas.
Miro’s mirror gouged out Shakespeare’s eyes.
It pre-saged the death of poetry
and fought World War II in reverse.
Miro’s mirror cracked in half.
The left half reflected "Spring Song" played by Dr. Seuss.
The right half showed the Buddha in the throes of cacophony.
Miro’s mirror deconstructed chaos and made a maze through
Rimbaud’s heart.
(Disingenuous Twaddle 2011)

Buddhaliciously Blasphemous
The Buddha is big and blasphemous
he wants you to rip out yer tongue
and take a vow of silent retribution
against the winds
(of change)
The Buddha is smiling and blasphemous
he wants you to mock the Catholic priests
and take a real vow of celibacy
(but you can fondle the dharma if you wish)
The Buddha is big and delicious.
He eats ephemera for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But he wants you to fast for the rest of your karmic lives.
(Counterexample Poetics 2011)

Negate Tyme
aka the riddles
The riddles speak to me with invisible tongues
and utter wordless verse about transparent oblivions.
The riddles speak to me in equations of rhyme
that Einstein solves while traveling back in time
The riddles speak to me in scrambled Sanskrit
foretelling the future of Latin on obsolete planets.
The riddles are riddled with holy black holes
and splattered with the rainbows of gravity
The equations speak to me in riddles of rhyme
chanting Tibetan Latin in transparent tongues
in an invisible oblivion solved by obsolete magicians.
(Eviscerator Heaven 2011)

Eternity found
My days have been infernal feasts of fire and delight; I have not
censored myself but lived loudly and boldly, blazing through
dim apathies and carving diamond paths through gruesome
nights. I have invented enigmas and flattened paradigms; I have
twisted through the labyrinth of myself and made my heart
invisible.
Now as my days wane, I float through the gardens that inflame
my senses. I imagine flowers that wrap their blue arms around
me, and suffocate me with their shrouded scents.
My funeral will be an hallucination of hymns and poisons; wines
will flow and hearts will sing. Guests will celebrate the sordid
epiphanies of my life: the euphoria of my birth, the rapture of
my death.
I have offered myself to the world; I have sacrificed myself to
the sun, and laughed heartily at the moon. The gods have loved
me, and opened the heavens in my honor.
I enter; the feast has begun again.
(Wings of Icarus 2007)

Death is imminent and I'm still smiling
It's raining cats and clocks.
I drink an entire bottle of dreams (vintage 1919)
and drift down a road made of smoke.
The umbrella of my imagination
flies away
flies away.
I am in no hurry to die.
My smile blooms
like a cyst.
Further down the road
I meet the phantom of myself.
I say hello and she laughs.
I smother her with my raincoat.
She wilts like a wounded smile.
Sleep waves to me with its green hand.
I gulp down a flask of smoke,
and fall toward the clouds
erasing themselves from my memory.
I knock on the sky
and no one answers
except for the stars
except for the stars
(Wings of Icarus 2007)

Salvador Dalai Lama
Salvador Dalai Lama paints mandalas of melting clocks. The
clock hands meditate, in lotus position, on the idea of temporal
ephemerality, then burst into flames of "o mani padme om," a
chant that mimics the humming of an electric appliance.
Salvador Dalai Lama dreams he was a mustache in a previous
life. As a mustache, he abused the faces of men and accrued
negative karma, causing him to morph into an elephant with
spindly legs.
Salvador Dalai Lama always hated being an elephant, so he
shaves his head in rebellion. His head as shiny as an eternity of
funhouse mirrors that reflect reality as it truly is: a
mustachioed monk who paints melting mandalas on a landscape
of reincarnated alarm clocks that meditate on the idea of
temporal frivolity, then burst into sparks of sun that only
imagine they exist.
(Cerebral Catalyst 2007)

Silent symmetry
I crave internal symmetry.
I want to drink liquid sutras
smoke mirrors
and exhale samsara
I want to poison all clocks
and regurgitate infinity
I want to dream of monks
who shout chants shaped like birds
I want to sleep inside a scream
I want to breathe clouds filled with comas
and choke on karmas made of cats
I want to silence all hallucinations
and blind all hymns
I want to die inside symmetry of birds.
(Blue Fifth Review 2006)

A cat stalks through the voluptuous mazes of my mind.
I caress her and she purrs,
releasing gardens
teeming with karmic flowers.
I pluck the flowers and reincarnate
into a memory of water.
(Menagerie 2009)

Hours
The hours rain down
like soft sparkling skulls.
The children catch them on their tongues,
eat them like they’re stars,
and become illuminated time.
(Counterexample Poetics 2011)

Miro’s scream
Miro’s scream became a new color of crayon.
His scream unfurled across the middle of eternity,
spattering the sky
with colors the shape of centuries,
and shapes the color of oblivion.
His scream cast a shadow onto the pavement of the sun,
climbed up the staircase of the moon,
and erased every star.
Miro’s scream ripped open like a red yawn,
and lullabies fluttered out like blue bats.
Miro’s scream became locked inside itself:
Miro had swallowed the key to eternity,
and oblivion unfurled like a new color of crayon.
(Cerebral Catalyst 2006)

Invisible twilight
Dusk dreams herself into being: the sun swallows itself whole,
spits out slivers of lunatic light; an unknown hand scribbles
graffiti of sightless eyes upon a mangled mask.
The trees with their many quivering tongues speak a terror of
truth to the wind. Birds weave a maze of melody, and cats stalk
invented shadows.
Time bursts into tiny spiders who coil white shadows to snare
snatches of twilight. The spiders gulp their prey, and grow
plump with darkness.
Starved spiders shrivel, and dawn screams himself awake,
flinging blood-stained shrouds over a memory of mad moons
and impossible twilights.
(Counterexample Poetics 2011)

Coma
The clocks weep an ennui of tears.
The black hour spills
through the eyes of the house
and strokes me with sleep-poisoned fingers.
The chimera licks me with her languid tongue:
I drown in dreams.
The clocks weep a euphoria of tears.
The white hour yawns
spilling pearls onto my sleep-fingered eyes.
I do not awaken
and I do not die.
(Medulla Review 2011)

Miro’s Nightmare
Miro’s Nightmare is coming to get you.
It crawls into your mouth
to lay eggs
that hatch into dreams
of murderous blue.
Miro’s Nightmare bleeds cats onto your eyes
and whispers fangs into your ears.
Miro’s Nightmare is an upside-down clock
and an inside-out heart.
It is in love with death
the scent of blood-streaked mirrors,
and with the color yellow
when it used to be black.
Miro’s Nightmare is coming to get you.
It lays clocks inside your heart:
they hatch into cats
with upside-down eyes.
(Haggard and Halloo 2009)

The Clockwise Cat
The clockwise cat
is wise to clocks.
She knows their motive:
to tame the savage animal of time.
The clockwise cat
hisses at the clock-cages;
her fangs gnaw the numbers
and her claws rip holes
in the frayed fabric of space.
The clockwise cat
moves in counter-clockwise cadences
across the hardwood floors of infinity.
She stalks illusions of impermanence
which flit like shadows
across the paint-chipped walls in her mind.
The clockwise cat
tells time with her eyes:
they blaze like candle flames
in the dim closets of oblivion.
The clockwise cat
sleeps 16 days an hour.
She dreams about the minutes
she will devour like bugs;
she awakens to seconds
poisoned like rats.
(Cerebral Catalyst 2006)

We two
(for Franc)
We two
move backwards in time
receding towards oceans
dripping magic curses from our tongues
and spilling flowers from our mouths
We two
rearrange the alphabet
dismantling vowels into hieroglyphics of sound
speaking multi-colored syllables
and bleeding language from our eyes
We two
scatter numbers to the wind
decorating the sky with an arithmetic of stars
smashing the clouds into silent symbols
and making shapes from the wind
We two
swim in reverse seas
speak strange syllables
and subtract the stars
from the geometries of wind
(Laika Poetry Review 2006)

Clocktocracy
There once was a network of autocratic Clocks
who with their terrible ticks and terrifying tocks
tyrannized the villages of Infinity
There once was a network of guerilla Watches
who rose up in the jungles of Paradoxes
to fight the dominion of the Clock despots
But the demonic Clocks
smashed every paradox
into an infinity of diminutive watches
(Counterexample Poetics 2012)

Time tricks
There are time tricks that will make your head spin.
There was the time that time did a backflip and we landed
upside down and we had to stand on our heads for 20 days. The
blood rush made us hallucinate images of bathtubs overflowing
with melted skulls.
And there was the time that time entered thru our subconscious
and stole all of the mirrors inside and sold them for scrap.
And then there was the time that time came waltzing in to our
math class to make fun of our ineptness at calculations. That
was when we said, "Fuck you, time" and flung out the door. And
then suddenly we were in a hallway filled with walking algebraic
equations, jeering at us.
Time tricks will melt yer skull, and your subconscious fear of
math will mock you in the cracked mirror at the End of Time.
(Zombie Logic Review 2013)

Toxic dyslexic
by Alison Ross
The toxic dyslexic
reads arabic with one eye closed
The toxic dyslexic
eats scrambled clocks
for a midnite snack
and regurgitates the greek alphabet
the toxic dyslexic
reads pythagoras
upside down
and dreams
of bats
in escher's house of angels
the toxic dyslexic
asphyxiates syllables
and chops them up
into fake algorithms
the disexlyc xotic
drinks hemlock through a straw
and dies of illiteracy
(Zombie Logic Review 2013)

About the Author:
Clockwise Cat publisher and editor Alison Ross has been
published here, there, elsewhere and nowhere. She
experienced rave-levels of ecstasy when she found out
she was shortlisted for the 2014 Erbacce Prize among
20 others, down from 5,000 entries. She was also
giddily bemused when was nominated for the Best of the
Net a few years back, though she lost out to savvier
scribes. Alison’s poesie will subvert your dissonant
dystopia into a euphonious utopia of Zen-Surrealist
bliss.

Order Clockwise Cats from Fowlpox Press:

CLOCKWISE CATS: THE
PREQUEL

CLOCKWISE PRAISE
With language that is recognizable in the unique version of hearing
something very specific (think Miles Davis’ or Thelonious Monk’s
sounds), Alison Ross’ poems can be pulled from a lineup very
easily. Her Clockwise Cats The Prequel is a collection of poetry that
builds mirrors onto and within her language that continuously
echoes and redefines itself, simultaneously. This “time-themed”
volume is both coherent and whimsical and demonstrates Ross’
focused playfulness among her unique images. This collection is
directional toward blending relatable experience with the exclusive
creativity that shapes each poem’s deliberate goal: to alter the
reader’s understanding. Ross has created a wondrous foundation for
her readers here. – Felino Soriano
Clockwise Cats: The Prequel
Alison Ross
2016 All Rights Reserved Alison Ross
Published by Feline and Nothingness Press