Catfish stoner underground radio,
                antenna feelers trust the bottom-
                crawlers eat the dirt eat the sludge
                catfish-run away! I want to be you,
                want to watch your mud-ugly grin
                peel back to tiny sharp teeth
                your beautiful freedom,
                ruddering through deep waters,
                want to eat you! To dip your flesh in egg,
                cornmeal and toss you in the iron
                skillet until you're crisp outside
                and tender in. What a beast I am,
                I can't just let you be, gotta eat you up,
                dark swimming ancestor,
                but neither can you let be the little fishies
                fleeting flickers of light you follow
                and consume. We consume, we consume
                to live, consumer of cells outside
                our bodies, so much bigger,
                more violent than a matter of letting,
                be the question how to let to live to eat.
                Tell me how fishbrains? Swim me how,
                ripple me goodbye, break the surface
                and sink again, get fat with light, heavy
                with mudslime, tough-skinned,
                hard-muscled. Feel the riverbottom,
                DJ its skittering cool song its raving
                siltbeats clouding the clear, obscuring your form,
                wriggle its current in through
                your gills, think it through for us
                with your bad cat free self. I dance to you,
                dance it out, dance it all off to your deepest groove.

Copyright © Valerie Bassett, 2003.  All Rights Reserved.