Out a Window
28 February 2006
Sitting in a coffee shop being ignored
Looked out the window cuz I was so bored
When much to my surprise I can’t believe what I see:
Leaves everywhere on each formerly naked tree
Except that little one over there with the faintest buzz
Like a pubescent teen’s first peach fuzz
Spring may not be fully sprung yet
But Nature ‘round here is all set
I’m Not Spoiled
27 February 2006
How dare they say so? I’m not spoiled
When I was a kitten I daily toiled
Day after tomorrow I’ll be six
And still my purr can give them kicks
Loving my human is a labor of love
You know very well what I’m speaking of
Why, just this morning I was sound asleep
When a sorry thought brought me out of the deep
A self-pitying complaint about a lack of greeting
As though every return required a new meeting
We hauled ourselves up, JJ and I
Hustled down the hallway to prevent a moist eye
He purred and I paced, played hard to get
That kind of pleasing hasn’t failed yet
Rain always brings ant trails but do I complain
Not a grumble say I, no I politely refrain
I’m patient, I am, as sure as you please
Even turning my head if I think that I’ll sneeze
So don’t tell me that you think I’m spoiled
Just because I require stroking when I choose to be coiled
Rainy days are here again
I hear those raindrops on my roof
Horses thunder across the turf
Animals subjugated; want further proof?
JJ’s taken my bed again
That chubby ill-trained muscular poof
Windswept sails skim the surf
Amphibians unrelated; I stand aloof
Water is not a cat’s best friend
And so this rhyme now must end
Olympians have wrapped up their show
After Americans had their usual row
Still our representatives show no shame
Content that an uncaring world knows their name
Whatever happened to national pride
And knowing when it was time to hide
Why does the media miss the real heroes
Focusing instead on fools’ woes
Or is it just the news that I read
Missing the good stuff because I forgot to weed
Trash needs dumping, that’s for sure
Only suckers bite at headlines that lure
With tales of wrongdoings instead of what’s right
Tales about those still fighting the good fight
Going about quietly each and every day
Knowing when to go and when to stay
People for whom praises don’t need to ring
People who prefer to cheerfully smile and sing
People whose actions show others how to be
With quiet, hard work, both at home and across the sea
26 February 2006
Life Cycle
25 February 2006
The stillness of another sleepy afternoon was abruptly broken by the sound of a shovel striking stone in the soil on the edge of the courtyard. Voices debated the wisdom of transplanting the long-suffering lemon tree into a hole that might straddle a water pipe. More important to JJ and to me is the fact that the goldfish who preceded us in this family are buried at the base of the lemon tree under discussion. What happens to them if the tree is uprooted? Isn’t that a violation of their final resting place? Or, like Europeans, are their remains sufficiently returned to the earth after five years that they will not be disturbed? Life, death, the endless cycle… these things go round and round in my furry brain… I only wish I knew. I must be satisfied, I suppose, merely to ponder… this and other ineffable things in my world.
Found this in P.U.'s mailbox, evidently downloaded a couple of years ago. Hope you enjoy these as much as I did. gmfe
Vectors 2.0: More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays
1. Already tomorrow and too late, still yesterday and too soon.
2. It was not sin that brought death, but the reverse. When God first appeared in Eden, we started, suddenly ashamed we had a secret no immortal could understand.
3. Mountains occur together.
4. I have no time, he snapped, as if he'd just asked himself for alms, and refused.
5. Birds of prey don't sing.
6. Happiness, like water, is always available, but so often it seems we'd prefer a different drink.
7. Travel reminds us we are always traveling.
8. Better to repeat the obvious than fear it.
9. Most of what looks like change is cliché perfecting itself.
10. How often feelings are circular. How embarrassing to appear embarrassed. How annoying to be annoyed.
11. I was 25, till I was 40, 40 till I was 50. But now my age is like the speedometer. If I don't pay attention it drifts, 60, 70, 80....
12. My illness cures me. By telling me at last what's wrong.
13. What a fool! I say of myself, with a vehemence and embarrassment that must mean I'd been thinking I wasn't.
14. The wrong blessing is no blessing.
15. They break down my body, my peace, alas, my principles: devils are personal, like genes. They are the one-room fire on the fourteenth floor that crowds watch, glad it's someone else. For large-scale catastrophe, you need a god: something everyone believes in.
16. In saying my work fails I flatter myself that I have imagined what it should have been.
17. Fire loves best what it cannot burn.
18. Do not be too quick to pull out your flaws. They endure dry seasons, thrive uncared for. They have deeper roots than you. They hold the slope in place.
19. The despair of the blank page: it is so full.
20. Ax built the house but sleeps in the shed.
21. The chorus fills what the soloist has emptied.
22. There is no misstep till you put your foot down.
23. It's not that no one notices his scheme, it's just that it would be more tedious to expose him than to go along. Which is more annoying: that he doesn't know this, or that he probably does?
24. I'm difficult to annoy, but the few who get the knack never seem to lose it.
25. His lie doesn't bother me as much as the truth he thinks he knows.
26. How sure we are that everyone's watching. How sure we are that no one sees.
27. We trust the embarrassed one. He believes the world is thinking of him more than it is. But at least he believes in the world.
28. Useful to see how you could love every person, every job, for an hour. Necessary to realize how short an hour is.
29. It's not a fact or feeling or even a flaw that's embarrassing but who I was pretending to be.
30. What scares me in suffering is the mechanical. The repetition compelled and wobbly, like a wheel with something wrong with it. The voice with something in it like bad brakes.
31. The Unembarrassable are like gods. We envy them; we hate them; they don't exist.
32. Know thyself. Ok, so?
33. Inside the head, art's not democratic. I wait a long time to be a writer good enough even for myself.
34. Institutions are the opposite of God: their periphery is everywhere, their center nowhere.
35. We can "have" ideas or feelings or experiences, but we cannot really tell which are ours, and they can be given away freely. But some things I need permission to tell. Our real privacy belongs to others.
36. Why do I complain, since I'd brush off solace? Some pains I just have to say, as if to confess faults before someone accused me of them.
37. Injustice: the god whose name we whisper when no other has remembered us.
38. First I have to learn to love myself, always makes me writhe. I'm the last person I want to hear I love you from, the last I want to say it to. The part of myself I like is the part that works, like a good tool. The part of myself I love is the part that loves you.
39. He Thought Positively till he became a euphemism for himself.
40. Some busy themselves to distract their passion, others because they cannot find it.
41. Why should they love your work? Do you?
42. When we suffer, we think we owe nothing. We imagine we suffer so we can imagine we owe nothing.
43. When all agree, so does the Devil.
44. Everything's text used to be scary: Look, I believe in less than you. Now it's just another comforting piety. You could be downloaded, Xeroxed, it says, you're immortal. And even better, No one's lived more than you, no one's wiser. Like the old song says, You are everything / And everything is you. A Great Book reading itself in the mirror.
45. Each year gets late earlier.
46. Wisdom was . . . knowing how to hold your head in the wind. But hold it that way always and you're a sermon, an ad, an idiot.
47. Light, beasts of the field, the firmament: easy. But not till the seventh day did God figure out Rest.
48. Billions of years, the dust hasn't settled. Water's still seeking its own level.
49. A car or stone becomes the exact temperature of the winter, but a man gets colder and colder.
James RichardsonThe Yale ReviewVolume 92, Number 2April 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Yale University All rights reserved. Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Warm-Up
22 February 2006
The weather’s warming
I like this trend
Though bugs are swarming
There’s more outdoor time to spend
That’s it; that’s all I’ve got to say
Why should I ramble on
When there’s sunshine in which to play?
I’m gone.
Smoked Out
20 February 2006
Smokey days choking haze
P.U. has put me in a daze
Two days of burning
Mounds of wood
Orthanc here at home
Can’t possibly be good
Aunty Gracie charred chicken flesh
Aunty Lynette caught JJ in mesh
Round floaty things everywhere
Chewable ribbon instead of cat hair
So many strangers in this place
All putting their noses in my face
What’s a fellow to do but retreat
Till late at night for a midnight treat?
JJ loves the pork juice on the ground
I like the salmon and shrimp all around
But smoke does funny things to perfectly good food
Putting me into an awkward mood
Today’s so cold after all that burning
And now my tummy has started churning
Auwe
Cold Blew
16 February 2006
This day was cold and quiet
But sundown has brought noise
JJ and I made a bet
About P.U.’s strange new toys
He bet that sitting in the sun
Would warm his frozen haunches
I figured when P. U. was done
There’d be shrimp for our hungry paunches
The sun waxed warm
Though the day was cold
There were no clouds to form
Pictures daring and bold
No foggy banks did I espy
To offer a warm blanket
Just crisp winds dry
Under clear blue sky with no rain in sight yet
When finally the sun started down
And still the car had not returned
JJ began to worry and frown
Though I was not concerned
Soon enough as I had foretold
The garage door was heard to open
In came P.U. bringing a bit of cold
And the scent of distant fen
The ocean, too, was in the air
And something else, I think
There was a hint of something fair
Mixed in with something stink
P.U. pulled out a hammer
Then came out a drill
The din was worse than the usual yammer
And then there was a spill
More blood than usually flows at night
Flowed from that damaged limb
The carpet changed red from white
The drill had just caught the rim
Now the house is quiet again
The flow of blood is staunched
Neither bettor can claim this night a win
Tomorrow a new campaign will be launched
For now it is enough to know
The house is warming up
And P.U.’s noise reaped what it did sow
Till the brim overflowed the cup
Love Is All a Round
15 February 2006
You say love and I chime in
First you speak, then I begin
The words sound good as they come out
But I don’t understand what the fuss is all about
We say these words each and every day
We show each other love in every conceivable way
Why should one day be more special than the next?
Why labor to compose that particular text?
If I’m a day late and a dollar short,
Will our love be something you have to abort?
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow will still all be
The perfect time to share love between you and me
So say it again just like before
Each day promise to love me more
So what if it’s just more of the same verse?
It’s still sweet, even when terse
Your actions are what show me how much you care
They are the proof of the love that you bear
Don’t bother to spend a lot of money
Just show me that I’m still your special honey
Yesterday’s so over, don’t give it another thought
I don’t care what you have or haven’t bought
Get over here and let’s get down to cuddling
That’s what fixes everything when I feel I’m just muddling
You’re the one that I want, I have no doubt
When you’re not with me, I always pout
But hold me and love me and stroke me all night
When we’re in each other’s arms, everything is all right
JJ the Magnificent
February 13, 2006
He leaps, he bounds
He makes no sounds
This ruddy Abyssinian
He spins, he twirls
He wows the girls
No matter what room he’s in
He paces, he stalks
Oblivious of gawks
He’ll not be done in
But despite pounces and quick starts
He just scrapes the feathers’ parts
Till the game is called
Now he can catch his breath again
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! What a day! What a day!
P.U. has spent the last two days in the garage, and we got to go along! Yesterday all those musty dusty boxes got moved to the other side of the garage, opening up a great big space. That was scary, but the good news was that the boxes were neatly stacked into cool steps and covered with tarp. JJ scaled to the top and settled down to survey the changed landscape while I investigated under the covers. It was great.
Then today P.U. decided to do some more stuff. I was just resting on the bed after a busy night romping around the halls when I was rudely awakened by some loud banging. At first I thought a plane had finally crashed into the garage, but when I went to check things out, it was just P.U. putting a couple of the Gorilla shelves back together. When the noise stopped, the real fun began.
At first I didn't know what was going on, but then I realized what P.U. was doing, so I called JJ to come see. We had just settled comfortably on the boxes when P.U. started moving them again. Soon we would be trapped on an island with no way down. Naturally I moved, but JJ just sat there and kept watching. Finally he had to leap down from atop a stack of boxes nearly five feet high. I saw him hesitate, but he finally did it. You gotta admire him for his grit, if not for his foresight.
Eventually all the boxes were either stacked neatly on the shelves, against the wall, or emptied. By that time I could feel the temperature dropping, signalling the end of another day. I headed back into the house as P.U. finished cleaning up.
Zzzzz Time!
AMAZINGLY SIMPLE HOME REMEDIES
1. If you are choking on an ice cube, don't panic. Simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat and presto. The blockage will be almost instantly removed.
2. Clumsy? Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.
3. Avoid arguments with the little woman about lifting the toilet seat by simply using the sink.
4. For high blood pressure sufferers: simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer.
5. A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives, then you will be afraid to cough.
7. Have a bad toothache? Smash your thumb with a hammer and you will forget about the toothache.
Sometimes, we just need to remember what the rules of life really are:
You only need two tools: WD-40 and Duct Tape.
If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40.
If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.
Also, remember:
Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
Never pass up an opportunity to go to the bathroom.
If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You get another chance.
If you shop anywhere but Wal Mart, you are just showing off!
And finally, be really nice to your family and friends; you never know when you might need them to empty your bedpan.
Pride
6 February 2006 – Embarcadero, SF
Water cascades in many streams
From diverse sources, so it seems
Reminiscent of youthful dreams
But all from manmade constructs
Leaking at the seams
Tieless men in shirts of blue
With coats and pants of like dark hue
Primp and play before the spray
While a photographer waits;
He has all day
These overgrown boys who would be men
Can change the world with the stroke of a pen
Token females more girls than women
Stand smiling patiently nearby
Suppressing within any sign of a sigh
Seagulls overhead ignore the foolish folk below
When time’s victorious, then they’ll crow
JJ has just marked the first bird sound of the new season. His bark is distinctive, a clear challenge to the feathered fowls that will soon be flocking back to mock my little brother and me for our earthbound status. 'Ware! War is coming! Fell deeds will be wrought upon any fowl fiend that dares to land or even buzz our courtyard.
Yes, been watching LotR again; how could you tell?
P.U. says those must be cherry blossoms burgeoning outside the windows and down the streets, flushing pinkly as they make their way up the barren tree trunks and stems. Would that I might see more!
What is with this archaic speech? P.U.: cut that out.
Spring is coming but it's not here yet
Buds are breaking through
Soon it'll be time to put up a net
One more gardening task to do
Meanwhile the rain just keeps coming down
Soaking the ground and driving us crazy
Causing my human to continually frown
While we all sit indoors warm and lazy
Brief bit of sun today led to some planting
Steady rain tonight will wash down new leaves
Cause fragile seedlings to do precarious slanting
Damage not covered by maintenance fees
Television's the same with its continual din
Children watch mesmerized every night
Parents and educators rage they can't win
Against mass media in such an unfair fight
A New Avenue of Exploitation
New York-bound puppies used as drug smugglers, feds say -- Newsday.com
February 1, 2006
People, especially movie makers, have been complaining about humans being used as couriers for smuggling drugs from one country to another. Now that that corridor is being more closely watched, black market purveyors have found another method: the intestines of animals. Thus far only Labrador retriever puppies have been discovered in this enterprise, but who is to say that there are not other animals being forced into this vile trade as well? If an unscrupulous veterinarian is willing to cut up a purebred puppy, why not a fine feline as well? Fortunately, unlike JJ, I am of feral ancestry, protected by my lowly birth. One cannot help but note the irony that people of the lowest echelons and animals of the highest breeding should be so similarly exploited. What does that say about the values of those involved in this enterprise?
