Day After Caturday Post: Scaramouche, Master of Concealment

Darlings, I moved recently and I have been too tired and too busy for poetry.  Scaramouche, my large black and white cat, has been demonstrating that he is still master of concealment.

Can you spot the black and white kitten?

What about now?  (Tamerlaine is not the master of concealment)

Hint, you really have to get on the floor to see him. 

Poetry Month: Moving with Rumi

I've finally begun sleeping in my new apartment!  I feel so much better now.  Everything is a mess still, but the mess can now begin to become better.  Also, it's MY Mess, not a roommate's mess. I am, however, too exhausted to come up with anything apropos, so here is one of my favorite lines of Rumi.

We are a garden

with plants and birdsong moving through us like rain.

Poetry Month: Tracking Cats in Spring

Pollen falls like snow.

Even the stealthiest cat

Is easily tracked.

Poetry Month: Moving with Basho

Darlings, I am in the soul sucking process of packing my life into boxes and moving the boxes somewhere else, and during the entirety of this, nothing will be clean or tidy and I get nothing done.  Nonetheless, as Basho pointed out.

Even a thatched hut

May change with a new owner

Into a doll's house. 

Poetry Month: (The Most Predictable) Baudelaire for a Bad Day

Darlings, I am inundated with first world problems.  The washing machine is leaking and there is too much water.  Just too much water!  Also, the battery in my car died, causing me to miss my massage appointment.  Baudelaire is the obvious poetry choice, but because I am moving soon my Baudelaire is in a box somewhere.  Instead of flipping through his poetry at leisure and with wine, I am relaying "To the Reader" because that's the only one of his I really remember.

Folly and error, avarice and vice, 

Employ our souls and waste our bodies' force. 

As mangey beggars incubate their lice, 

We nourish our innocuous remorse.

Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance. 

For our weak vows we ask excessive prices. 

Trusting our tears will wash away the sentence, 

We sneak off where the muddy road entices.

Cradled in evil, that Thrice-Great Magician, 

The Devil, rocks our souls, that can't resist; 

And the rich metal of our own volition 

Is vaporised by that sage alchemist.

The Devil pulls the strings by which we're worked: 

By all revolting objects lured, we slink 

Hellwards; each day down one more step we're jerked 

Feeling no horror, through the shades that stink.

Just as a lustful pauper bites and kisses 

The scarred and shrivelled breast of an old whore, 

We steal, along the roadside, furtive blisses, 

Squeezing them, like stale oranges, for more.

Packed tight, like hives of maggots, thickly seething

Within our brains a host of demons surges. 

Deep down into our lungs at every breathing, 

Death flows, an unseen river, moaning dirges.

If rape or arson, poison, or the knife 

Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff 

Of this drab canvas we accept as life — 

It is because we are not bold enough!

Amongst the jackals, leopards, mongrels, apes, 

Snakes, scorpions, vultures, that with hellish din, 

Squeal, roar, writhe, gambol, crawl, with monstrous shapes, 

In each man's foul menagerie of sin — 

There's one more damned than all. He never gambols,

Nor crawls, nor roars, but, from the rest withdrawn,

Gladly of this whole earth would make a shambles

And swallow up existence with a yawn...

Boredom! He smokes his hookah, while he dreams 

Of gibbets, weeping tears he cannot smother. 

You know this dainty monster, too, it seems — 

Hypocrite reader! — You! — My twin! — My brother!

Caturday Poetry: Welcome Summer

Now welcome Summer with thy sunne soft,
That hast this winter`s weathers overshake,
And driven away the longe nighties black.

~Geoffrey Chaucer

It's starting to be green and hot here, which causes my kitties to start flattening out and getting a bit melty around the edges.

Poetry Month: An Evening Thunderstorm with Basho

I dislike rain, but Basho didn't.

In the twilight rain

These brilliant hued hibiscus...

A lovely sunset.