A chipper little mouse dashing hither.
Enjoying springy legs, she easy skates
across wooden floorboards. Bounds now thither,
up over sneakers careless-laid. All Fates
seem happy ones. They all sing, “Explore and conquer,
My little Ulysses!” Meanwhile I plot to knock her
into Hades

All night I’m woken again and again
by plaintive chirps. They eddy, swirl and mix
into soft, slip-sliding dreamscapes. And then!
with morning’s light I see her rear legs fixed
side-on-side to cruel glue trap set by mine own hand
Last night’s merry machinery is now jammed–
crushed and faded

Gets worse:
Too queasy to free her with dignity,
I force a square-sided pillar of green
rat poison near her little maw. And flee.
That night I find her with a friend stuck, leaned
athwart her sunken stern. She breathes scarce; her friend’s
awake. In panicked loop, he rams her rear end–
rams and rams again her twisted, broken side.
I don’t know why.

I set the torture chamber in a bag,
in hopes they’ll drift to gentle suffocation.
Not good. Sentient lights handled like rags.
Another F. I see her elation.
So happy scurrying! My apartment
a magic world to discover–heavens-sent.
And for this joy at life,
I served her twenty hours of torture

Every conscious moment’s an enlightened one.
The mice had the same awareness that Jesus did.
And God’s breath flowed through their little setting suns
As Jesus it filled when, on rugged old cross, to death he slid
The mystic knows what the mouse watches while
she dash-dances in joy and sorrowing expires

Pen Name: Tom “Hang your head” Dooley
Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew Watson