Pinecone glorious draft of beer she had a dawn lamb down the ding! Pies done! White kitty coffee cup a lamb a BANG in the dark. Deer bed down in tallgrasses or under frowning myrtles while digging a hole deep enough to bury that horse when he should have been plowing with it just ate Caesar’s nerve. Driving a stake in over Brutus’s grave. “One day a garden here.”

The thaw- it was time to plow and the sun did set without. Red down black and there was no moon that first night Brutus in the ground. When they bed together to keep warm as the fire died, he would not love as usual, and in the latest part of night, before it turns early, he was gone nothing ventured nothing gained; nothing gained is ever kept.

Lincoln’s furled brow cast a shadowcross the south in those dark days northern cannons belched starspangled smoke cross many a whiteweed field and the jockstrap joy was a grey horse gone into the toolshed shod that day and with nothing but his feedbag on. What folks lived thro it picking up their pieces the back edge of it blackheart muting out their sunrise mumbling grumblethunder curse and flashgutted gone off with its dead?

For Caesar there is no dawn- it breaks on the storm’s black countenance and is absorbed. And the horizon has blent with the sky and the colorless pines arrow up into her belly. What heavygutted cloud will the first twisting coil dip down from? On whose head will it landwhirl tousling hair folding up barns throwing shingles like monkey & the janitor he’s got no soul now Catherine can see it in Caesar’s eye there is nothing knowns went into the haystack, where voices kept.

Consider Caesar. He believed at the center of a man are only his parts. Pull him to pieces and see. It is how you put the pieces together that make the man. All in pieces pulling apart and coming together hold on let me process the fall apart the only constant our own breathing one two three the forest heaving in hills and us falling apart around ourselves holding ourselves in some semblance of self like falling down pants in both the high and low places emptyspaced and outraged was he now a galloping horse his mind to the mares had gone and the quarter where his blacks had been lay before him empty. No more farming this land reverted to blood and her oxen hid in the hay hiding all things intimate.

If you open the hay just right on a springtime Sunday you may hear a few words- sometime entire conversations. Rainbows and blueberries galore home town after the rain. Ditches rushing water out down to clean the stagnant lands because cattle shit in the field on even the holiest of days and a great shot of whiskey down the raspthroat snakebacked cameltoed britches coming off, finally, in the dark, a nuisance O Caesar love me darling have me O shoot the goddamn gun.

That for some people a furry kitten will suffice, just as some juices are merely orange and not spiked with whiskeysemen yet childless. Last of February first March and spring plowing for corn when your horse dies from eating thorny thistles by the creek dammit what a fine horse! Red-eyed blackskinned whitenosed sweaty old Brutus had ever carried Caesar home dead drunk in the deepnight. Now he lay in thorns a mouth of thorns Caesar held Brutus’s long black head in his arms in the pasture as the sun broke and the dewfrost lit the shuddering horse began to shiver and then it was gone the last bloodbubble popped his whitenose red and it was over.

Caesar saw his black horse enter their little white church as Deacon Jones was preaching. And Brutus was alive he pranced bouncing on hind hooves across the pavers clicking between the pews with no head on his dark body at all in the whitelight pranced just like a swan a sawn necktop and flowers sprayed out Brutus’s neck as he pranced, tulips, roses, peonies and marigolds, daisies they all sprayed up his neck and pass't about the congregation. No more plowing- the crossglass is howling and the blue vomit grey air is wishing round the sill the sudden end day doom no bell worth ringing no assistance to be had none could ever help when God is determined to erase you- why must His eraser be so terrifying?

“Goddamn it woman!” A twisting soil has formed on Brutus’s gravewhite kitty cup a lamb a BANG in the dark! Rises casting the dirt up in a widening coil as it became too dark to see anymore this thing that was his had blown off in the breeze and he is enlivened now, Caesar- gone to fight the manbeasts of old Gaul- knows this storm as he knows himself. He knows it is Brutus peeling up the roof of his barn scattering out the soft soil of the yetfresh grave its throat fleshwet stench that 6 foot dirt dive we must all take let Caesar take it tonight. Down to the thorny earthbed when Brutus came to stand hindlegged obscene. But the folks in their pews were loving it. And now this storm whispered in his ear its whirlshriek groanings.

Catherine could not hold the man. When Caesar unlatched the door it kicked in wide filling the house with soil and graveleaves. The hills wore wet fur on their sides. Everbrown. Where had Caesar gone where was his dawnbody slumped against the naked tree as she expected? She went out in her boots and the mud climbed up her till she was only halfwhite Caesar was nowhere and the grave of his old horse was a black hole all muddy. Its body must have washed into the river- a total loss. But lo!

There in the fenced pasture with green grasses a great puddle in the middle, stood a horse graying- a grey dapple must have been about 30 years old- wearing Caesar’s straw hat. He longmouthed the browngrass alert, watched the edge of his fence- and when the horse saw Catherine it came over.

She could tell by his eyes as much as by his smell it was Caesar. Now she had to feed him hay. And she plowed the field with him. Catherine missed Caesar’s man form very much but she did not forsake him. Caesar bowed his head before Catherine and nodded yes between smoke and sky he plowed the ground for her and made it open and he planted the seed in it was Caesar the man changed to a horsemoon back again and she became whole and radiant smiling down and Caesar knew that he too was a new person brand new and all the same he a horse galloping off down the brownhills under the moon as a manhorse was so pleased when Catherine finally let her have his way in the barn til General Lee came by the farm on his way to a violent conflagration. And he saw how grey Caesar leapt over fences happy to be a horse and decided he should have him for his own.

So General Lee took Caesar on his way off to battle and acted in a violent way with him all day stomping on people and ripping out guts with a spear and shooting folk in the back as they ran away and General Lee was awesome to everybody that day (nobody does it like General Lee!) and he gave Caesar plenty of carrots to eat and Caesar was shaken but what does a shizzlestick like that know when the grapeshot splashes among the soldiery Caesar prancing as honest as anyone and just as opaque, a darkroom in daylight. And General Lee looked Caesar in the eye between battles and he spoke from his white beardface these words,

“Hey Dickhead. What good are you?”

Lee gave Caesar some filthy bits of mancarcass to eat because Lee hated a fancy horse. He wanted a horse that helped with the killin’.

Maybe as a horse you should eat from a bag of feed tonight these sour breads as the frost settles about you in the barn pinecones at your once tender feet so spiky they just flatten under you moosh in your shitstraw goes into a confederate garden now notice yourself bloodthirsty and Caesar did. And the next day he did kill and maim and rip and it was well noted how Caesar did tear the limbs of the people and suckle on blood that day and strip flesh from backsides and tear out the guts of his enemy and lap them all up in battle. Ding! Pies done! White kitty cup a lamb a BANG in Lee’s raging horse like it was hunting rabbits tearing apart the Union officers with his horse mouth.

And look at Jackson! He is like a stone wall! Stonewall Jackson stood like a stone wall because he was staring into the raging battlefield below, how that good horse Caesar carried General Lee under his arm and kicked over cannons and slapped Ulysses across his face with a gore-sotted hoof. General Lee splattered Caesar with the blood of Union soldiers every day of the war until Caesar’s body was permanently stained.

Stonewall wanted that “old paint” for his own and took a tub of oatmeal to him in the middle of the night. Caesar had gone to the hill to look back at home and try to see his Catherine there all alone working on something and then from the bushes there was a man with a tub of oatmeal and Caesar was a horse just had to follow. And Caesar ate the oats in Stonewall’s arms and galloped thro the woods with Stonewall on his back and up the mountains humming heeyyyh O hMMMmmmm hmm hmmm and they were happy.

Stonewall explained to Caesar how much he loved him for his courage and Caesar neighed and grunted, and Stonewall led him to a flowing stream of fresh water and they rested there. And Caesar sipped of the water, and he sipped and sipped with his horsemouth until he caught a fish in it, a mighty mountain fish with thick scales and fangs, and Caesar smiled at Stonewall when he chewed it up before him.

STONEWALL: Ah Carnivorous horse,

Let me Ride upon you

And chase down every groundhog

And Squirrel! How

Many you may eat! Rabbits and

Fawns and Raccoons. Let us

Line your throat

with Fur!

So they galloped about the mountains and Stonewall watched as Caesar snapped up every rodent in his long jaw and chewed, head high, gulping guts and flesh and bone asqueal like a hungry drunk at happy hour Stonewall Jackson riding on his horse ya Caesar go! Ya Caesar whoa! Stonewall Jackson giddyap go Caesar go gut that grizzly bear with my sabre.

Ever seen a horse run on its hind legs into the field of battle to tear into the enemy with sharpened hooves bloodsmearn horsebelly biting slashing and tearing taking a spear and making blue kabobs of all the soldiery and liberating the South from such treacherous Yankee ways? O Heeyyyh MMM hmm O hmmm hmm go Caesar slash and bite and trample and toss and kill and pillage and chop the enemy the manhorse all ferocious thorns and Stonewall stayed on him the whole time shooting people with his gun and swinging it at folks and slapping people and tearing off beards and giving out wedgies like a silly clown giving cotton candy to children at a party atop Caesar into a red sunset galloped cross the battlefield with bloody flag and flying tears score the day and the sunlight dying low over tramplecorpse field bloodloving horse and Stonewall how he is a stonewall on top of his maneating horse. O Heyyy hOmmm mmhMMMy hmm Stonewall came into the battlefield and cried a manhorse victorious and Stonewall took him and they rode together into the woods and they had a great time and they picknicked between their bloody battles and Caesar the horse was a good horse until one night Stonewall and Caesar were coming in drunk between the lines they got ding! Pies done! White kitty coffee cup a lamb a BANG in the grave mistake

shot down by his own confederates in the dark and Caesar dragged him back to camp and Stonewall had to let the surgeon lop off his arm. And Caesar did all of the surgeon’s work for him. For Caesar had always been handy with an axe. And he proved that he could handle one even with his hoof hands. And Caesar saw Stonewall’s single tear, for they stared into each other’s eyes during the operation.

STONEWALL: Caesar, beloved

Stallion, take this Arm

Which you have chopped

So meaty, sleeve and all

And carry it in your

Saddlebag, as

A remembrance of me

And a token of

Manhorse friendship.

So Caesar did. He took the heavy bleeding greysleeved arm and put it in his saddlebag and carried it with him everywhere. The other horses were very jealous; he did not consider it against his vows to lay with a mare from time to time, and his man arm never failed.

So Caesar carried it in his saddlebag. But General Lee was pissed because he had thought to make a marvelous golden shrine for the arm. Caesar liked having the arm in his saddlebag because it made him feel manly. So he went on home with it when Lee began to search in earnest. He trotted much the way he remembered Brutus trotting, past thornbushes along the ditchside a horse’s headflower fountspray down congregation pick a flower call it yours and own it please you are meat and you are going to eat meat and let us be eaten let my arm be eaten let it be thrived upon and fed. As if Brutus were dragging him drunk homeward eat up all the daisies and own this land with Stonewall’s arm in your bag go run with ponies how many mares will have you?

Caesar found Catherine a blind witch by the time those Union folk had gone from her fields knitting nothing, fields of nothing but white weeds under that moon their slaves all gone off and no sound even. No food but dust and sawdust digging for any forgotten potato at all. And when she saw Caesar’s straw hat rise from the dusty arc of the road between the ditches, all her parts were brought back together. And then the horse beneath the hat fell her apart again.

Can you see catstarvings in the dark? Go to her the kitten. And he did love and loved her in the middle of the night he did. He had convinced her to love him and he loved her well in the night over some hay and it kept their voices within it his horsevoice and hers and remained unstirred thereafter holding them.

Her sleek tears beg you change, return- perhaps in April my dear. Life goes in draining the old ways are going drownt the pond lies she in its bottom and the fish are her pieces.

Alive in the untruth her life collects as dew on a grasstip, a condensation on a glass he ploughing deadhorse down ditches drain the rain wash day down holes in the ground and treeroots hold soil like giant fingers grasp sand. The treeday fades in rainwashed and brisk he gone now never back stupid man gone into the storm what took him and this fading in of sourceless light of nowhere gone and got him ding! Pies done! The fields all washed and mirrorditches overflowing pond where the catfish had multiplied so many times what they once had been.

And they lay peaceably in the hay resting after a plow. Catherine slept and Caesar went cantering down to the water to enjoy the fish and suckle its surface. The pond was like the sea to him now white kitty cup lamb BANGing in the dark when your eye does reach the sea.