Tec finds a beer cellar. Doesn’t care which.

He’s shaking like a leaf. What the fuck’s that. He thinks.

My whole body’s against me and my mind

Is giving me flak as well.  He rushes in,

slamming the metal door behind. Orders a stiff

schnapps and knocks it back. Look like you needed that.

The barman notes. Look like you seen a ghost. He adds.

Laughs. Give me another. And a liter of beer.

Tec lopes off to a corner table to brood and sulk.

*

I am bent out of shape. He thinks.

Like fender crashing into the future

 coming the other way at speed

The crumpled complexities of life need

only be smoothed, unfolded, panel-beaten out.

He feels flat as stale beer and shallow as a puddle

 in the lane. Nothing, when all is said and done,

worth writing home about… A blank spreadsheet.

An empty diagram. A page that just scrolls down

forever… No depth… Walking a never-ending plank

over a sea of sharks.

*

Six liters of lager later, thoughts of a putsch dispelled,

Cop’s staggering up the Reichstag steps and back

down the back alley jerry-can in hand

stumbling through trash cans to the stop where he can get

the tram. The streetlamp’s out. Eyes glinting  emerald in the dark.

The deep jet body of the animal

lost in the black of night. Her red jaws dripping glimmer

slightly white under the stars. She oscitates, sniffs fresh blood

on the air. And speaks. Her voice that of the villain

in the spy flick’s final act. Roles are reversed.

The cat sits evil in a comfy office chair

someone has dumped, stroking the human resting on her lap.

 Like a Madonna and her little man. Shrunk,

Cop plays Faust now to the Panther’s Mephistopheles

on this Walpurgisnacht. The game begins.

Lithograph by Dickman, Jones & Hettrich https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11160479