Colorfully masked…

full of cat-willfulness…

furtive and mendacious:-

Or else, like the eagle…

Long-staring into abysses…

Eagle-like, panther-like

are the poet’s yearnings”

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra

The panther splits herself in two and sends an eagle

off to guide her like a drone, relaying signals

from antennae along her arching spine.

Her heavily made-up face alert as ever

to the scent of crime. Driven, coquettish,

quizzical, vain. Angelus Novus, she

flies a sense of misguided justice like

a giant kite across the skies, and spies

on all the goings-on in cellars and back-alleys

that human beings—bar in the tabloid newspapers—

won’t tell. Time to delete the lot.

She thinks. Better a different thinking

creature take the sunlit stage. Time for a spot

of apocalypse. She reasons. Fireworks.

She rubs her paws together in glee.…

Photo by Ingo Doerrie on Unsplash