"Stray Cat in a Straitjacket"

Animal emotions from a human soul. Pull me close, don't push me back. Let me in, I know you can. It's everything I am, on the surface and sometimes just under. In addition to the title poem and an afterword, it's broken into four chapters of twelve poems each. A total of fifty poems written through everything I've done and everyone I've been over the past six years or so.

I hope that you'll take the chance to carry my words with you, off into the wilderness or deep into the city. I want to find them lost in the arms of loved ones and friends, given as gifts to wake up souls, slipped beneath pillows or read under trees on autumn days. I wish to one day discover myself in a used bookstore, or in a bin of unwanted works at the local thrift store. Dreams are made of such things, carried off into the darkness of fading youth. That's a nightmare worth riding.

thanks for the magnetism,
Steve Skafte

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 | chaos

Something Like Jesus Christ
Black & White in Colour
please gamble responsibly
Dextrocardia
Life in a Cold Climate
Hunger
the shiver
Siberia
Waiting Around to Live
wistful thinking
Low Tide
The Berlin Wall

2 | mystery

Has this Nymph a Name?
Home Is Where the Stars Are
Your Coat of Arms
days of heaven
signs of life
homes of our neighborhood
the limits of control
aurora borealis
the trees are bleeding
story of a daydreamer
Wings Being Born
The Fault

3 | distance

If I Were Going
Dreaming in Technicolor
Life and Death and All That's Left on the North Shore of Nova Scotia
power lines have lives of their own
My skin will find me out
Do you fear what I fear?
Walking Backwards Down the Stairs
The Navigator
your flight is cancelled
souls of lost sailors
the black sea
cure for the common cold

4 | passion

the most vulnerable time of the year
Wingless Raven
speaking in silence
tornado weather
a wedding in death valley
when we were souls
Do it for her
blinding love
sunken treasure
Ghost Reader
Holy Ground
The Red Door