The Impulse

This prehistoric speck
(smaller than that)
sat inanimate
somewhere in rock or air
not yet life,
before it grew a cell
and lived.
This same speck ( Much smaller)
attached itself to life,
and so I inherited it
many millions of years later,
this evolved memory,
this message
to go back to nothing--
take a free ride,
with no concerns
of life.
not by choice,
although,
it gives me one....

to release myself from life.

John Durler's Questions:

Could you please tell me if the above poem is clear.  If you think words are unnecessary, please tell me frankly.  I do not have any favorite words.

The Cat's Bird Tree

was littered with delicate skeletons,
once the bird's, singing freedom songs.
Notes died in their throats, clawed into silence.
Over time, they left.  Now My murdering cat
sits at my door,
howls at their denial of her rights.
She seems to say in her particular queenly arrogance,
I must do something.
I clip her claws.  The birds return.
They sing their songs again.
She watches, remembers, licks her chops,
paces around the tree, jumps, claws,
bewildered, falls, again and again,
until in defeat, she moans, meows mournfully,
and subsists on scraps from my table.
She struts across the yard, and as a leaf falls,
she crouches, watches. tail twitching,
leaps, swipes the leaf, batting it back and forth,
flipping, turning, jumping,
rolling in a primal dance.
She snatches another in mid air,
her prey, an icon, her skill, deadly,
as the afternoon wanes on her
battlefield of vanquished victims.

John Durler's Questions:

Does the cat's wants overpower her needs here?  Is her attitude one you think a cat would adopt.  Is the imagery right. Or should it be corrected?  Are the birds projected correctly, or do the seem ghosts?