Poetics and Ruminations

New Mother Goose #30

MUFFIN LORE

With thanks to Dana Robert Rowe.

Muffin’s human partner.

 

Muffin is a clever cat

Upon his mound of tomes.

No doubt he will purruse them all

Before he writes his poems,

But there is one he must rehearse

Regarding types and norms

Before he writes his purrfect verse,

And that’s The Book of Forms.

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.

 

R.I.P. Bianca and Smoky

 

Bianca was a lady,

Plouffy as a pillow,

With one blue eye and one of green,

As graceful as a willow.

 

Smoky was her fellow,

Black to the nth degree,

As manly as a feline male

Could ever hope to be.

 

They could not be apart for long —

Where she went he would follow,

So they have gone where lovers go

And left behind a hollow.

The Passing of Sweetie-Pie

R. I. P. SWEETIE-PIE

Summer 1994-April 5, 2010

 

Here lies pretty Sweetie-Pie,

Black of pelt, amber of eye,

Who loved to purr and take a nap

Upon an old man’s welcome lap.

May her repose be dark and deep.

Let roses grow where she must sleep.

 

Wesli Court

 

Comments from readers on “Pookah, The Greatest Cat in the History of the World”

 

Lew,

No, that would be MY cat, Mrs. Katz.

Clarinda Harriss

Professor of English

Towson University

 

Clarinda,

Everyone who owns a cat would dispute my claim. Unfortunately, on Monday, April 5, 2010, the same day "Pookah" was published in The Tower Journal, Vol. 2, Number 4, Spring-Summer 2010 at http://towerjournal.com/spring2010, we had to have our latest cat, Sweetie-Pie, put down.

Lew

  

Lew,

    Oh, No! That is a terrible irony. And I have to admit that I knee-jerk-responded before I'd read the piece. I AM a (knee) jerk.

Clarinda

 

FAITH

 

Where is it we think we’re going?

There are 72 virgins

waiting for you — and for me, all

my cats, if there is a heaven.

Lew

 

Lew:

Nice story indeed.

I had a dog named Pookah, Pookie for short. She was named, as yours, after the Jimmy Stewart friend Harvey. And yes, she was a good doggie.

Years later when I married, my wife was horrified by the name. In her language Bahasa (the Malayan family of Malay and Indonesia with some 300+ million speakers), 'pookie' is a slang term for pudenda, and like its Anglo-Saxon cousin, not a proper word for discussion.

Such for the variances of people and their tongues.

Cheers,

Jerry Patz

 

I can hear your voice in this one, Lew. Nice.

George Goetz

 

Hi Lew !

as a fellow cat-lover,

I really a-purr-eciated your essay about Pookah!

seriously, it was really a joy to read it,

and I look forward to sharing it with friends...

Russ Tarby

 

Thanks for sharing this, Lew.

I've been a cat person all my life. And coincidentally, I currently have the Greatest Cat in the History of the World. Though others, including my girlfriend, would likely object to that title...

Best,

Markisan Naso

 

    Wonderful memoir, Lew.  It's not only particular to the individual Pookah, it is universal, as in many ways it is the story of Panther, the world's best cat.  Panther was all black, the tiniest twist of white on his chest, and very like Pookah in habits, attributes, and delights.  Here's a poem in Sapphics I wrote for him some years back, while he was still with us (double-spacing NOT intended):

     Existential Guest

...we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can ....

 –Hart Crane, 'Chaplinesque'

 

From out of his great question-mark, that past

he may recall behind his golden eyes

but cannot set to words (however well

he speaks in his silence)

 

he joined us.  Slow to approach, yet hunger-drawn,

he inched from sheltering among tall sheaves

of lilies to steal crumbs we'd left for crows–

a simple communion.

 

Our voices reading Hamlet turn on turn

drifted across the sill to where he crouched

(snarling and scared and starved enough for bread)–

tones caught in his spirit.

 

Something in the iambics, was it, lulled

his panicked heart–?  He settled in tall leaves

under the window, hunched and listening.

I took out white dishes

 

easy and casual, looking off across

the vacant lot and park, looking at clouds,

setting down food and water like dropped weeds

or garden tools, seeing

 

he'd fled at my advance.  Might he return

once I was off the scene?  I spoke to grass,

blossoms and post and spruce; said nothing much.

I think it was voices,

 

voices he'd missed, some tall one saying words,

some resonance.  Next day he came for food,

stayed for the reading, tall-eared, curled at ease

for over an hour.

 

Slowly he forsook rushes, rain, and stalks,

forsook high solitude, wind under fur,

forsook street nights, became our connoisseur

of distance and shadows.

 

Magical Cat, we say, O Golden-Eyed;

Black One, we call him, Mystery Cat, or Dark.

As snow has in the arctic, he has names:

antiphonal praise-songs.

 

And I've no way to spell his throat-response;

perhaps Phoenician glyphs could catch it, or

Makah phonetic symbols:  he  comments free

of ultimate answers.

 

I hope the two of them are meditating under a catnip bush like the one in our yard ....

Ruth L. Harrison

Dear Lew,

What a marvelous and poignant and endearing tribute to Pookah. I was teary-eyed at the end. I am so glad that I got to meet him! He truly was the Greatest Cat in All the World. I also feel honored to have my recollection of him shared. I would like to share your tribute with the family, I may.

Owing to your great love for cats, I would urge you to write a collection like Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, but Pookah stands out so far beyond most felines, it

would be hard. Although another book by a cat lover for the rest of us cat lovers in the stream would be all to the good, too.

HAIL POOKAH!

Dr. Steven E. Swerdfeger, Ph.D.

Publisher

Star Cloud Press

 

Steven,

I made a start on your book of cat poems, but my heart isn't in it. I couldn't compete with T. S Eliot anyway. I remarked to Jean on our walk today that I wondered what he would think if he knew that his most famous work in this century is "Cats." She said he'd likely be quite surprised. I think he'd be something worse than that.

Lew

 

UNCLE LARRY

 

Old Uncle Larry, leery of losing,

         played with aces of spades in the cellar,

         cursing when he lost.

His partner was a cat

         that mewed at the mice nicely,

         nipping their shoethong tails

         as they scooted gaily, without fear,

         among the cardboard bistros

         Uncle Larry built.

Here a curse, there a curse,

         everywhere a cursecurse

         as the aces fluttered loosely,

         like black moons arched

         and pointed in a single direction.

All Larry could do was kick the cat.

 

That was it: a kick and a yowl

         and old Uncle Larry on his kneecaps

         cutting at the mice with tooth and knuckle

         as they scuttled by

         scourging the cards.

 

From the series “The Sketches,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

  

TIMOTHY BOURNE

1778-1839

 

There was an animal in the sun

         and he was black.  He was the cat

         who lived with us here, in this house.

 

There is no danger in blackness, in

         the darkness itself, except that

         it hides itself well in shadow

 

and in the night so that we cannot

         find it among the trees, among

         the roots of the woods and the weeds.

 

There were no children here, no offspring,

         no legacy of the springtime

         for the cat to play with or my

 

wife to fondle, or myself to heft,

         feeling the weight of the future.

         The cat was all for each of us,

 

his blackness the blacker for the love

         we bore him and for the shadows

         we knew he loved more deeply than

 

he loved us.  We knew the cat would go

         some night.  Came the morning we did

         not find him seeking sun.  My wife

 

wept for a while.  The house felt weightless

         and plundered.  Dark had bolted dark,

         and blackness had contained itself.

 

From the series “The Green Maces of Autumn: Voices in an Old Maine House,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

 

THE ATTIC

 

Things, the work of dust and summer flies, upstairs over the other rooms, lying where they     were created under the covers of trunks. The mathoms, original art of shadows     drowsing in boxes: dresses and shirts worn by the seasons at their balls and     weddings; the toys mice play with; mirrors reflecting upon solitude; cords and     scissors.

Downstairs  the Inhabitant moves slowing among orderly rooms; his wife is a comfort, his     child little trouble, and the cat is kindly for the most part.

In the attic it is quiet; rain touches the roof and falls slowly from the eaves.

If the Inhabitant intrudes at odd times he does not notice the machine amid the clutter.  It     stands in a corner behind a rack of clothes in shades of brown and yellow, a red                flower printing itself now and again on some fabric fading into the slanted beams.

He is mildly surprised by the numbers of mathoms. At times it is hard to remember: a     photo in a gilt frame, a ribbon, someone's scroll.

They are worth an hour's musing in semi-darkness, the hum of a wasp on the ceiling,     street sounds muffled. The machine is never discovered: the only mechanism to                intrude — lightly, nearly beneath any threshold — is a mower in the hands of a                  distant neighbor.

When the door of the mathom shop is closed and the Inhabitant leaves the print of his            footsteps for a moment on the wooden stair, things pause. There is no movement,           not even of time. The mathoms listen until, downstairs, carpets and rugs swallow the          noises of living, until the furniture absorbs motion.

Then the machine clicks on: the clock dial begins to turn; dust feeds the cogs. It is making     things, making them slowly, out of the debris of afternoons and the streetlamp                  suicides of evening moths.

It takes forever, but the mathoms accumulate, sift into the corners like drifts, send up an        aroma as of the slowest burning — the scent of must. Under the mathom shop the             Inhabitant senses — at most, perhaps — a vague weightlessness overhead and, now           and then, the cat acts strangely.

 

THE CAT

Long-haired and black as shadow

the cat comes to drive

a pad of yellow foolscap

and a ballpoint pen out

 

of the Inhabitant's hands for

it is time again to

handle the palpable dark not

to compose to write about

 

the loom and shuttle of

shadow moving mechanically across clock

faces but to pass hands

lightly down the pelt of

 

smooth moments look you no

harm is meant by this

passage it is just that

things were meant to be

 

this way the waiting the

soft animal with sharp teeth

and claws sheathed lurking in

corners will come out to

 

be stroked and enjoyed for

it is lethal but sensual

as well and it means

no particular ill the hour

 

for striking has not arrived

it is not the enemy

but a familiar of houses

a domestic that keeps accounts.

 

From the series “The Inhabitant,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

 

TICK

 

         I am a cat with a tick

buried in my head.  If I could speak,

         I would tell you I can feel

the insect head nestling within my

 

         brain, not just against the white

bone.  I can sense its mechanical

         currents buzzing in the blood,

showing the mandibles how to clench,

 

         the belly how to bloat, how

to make two lives one.  It is not a

         matter of will for either:

It feels my claws sliding in their sheaths;

 

         I feel it growing stronger

on my substance.

                                            My master?

As he looks at us, I see our two

 

         minds sink into his eyes.   We three

meet at the center of his thoughts.  My

         claws unsheath there.  The insect

bloats in dark vessels.  Here is where we

 

         shall live together — a nest

of boxes, three separate designs,

         three steps in Becoming, a

skull within a skull within a skull.

 From the series “The Weed Garden,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

 

"A SQUIS'D CAT" — BURTON

Louis Wain (1860-1939), a British artist, was internationally known for his drawings of cats, characterized by their almost human expressions and antics.  In 1921 Mr. Wain suffered a brain injury in a motor accident, from which he never fully recovered.  From that time — possibly as a result of his injury, possibly as an artistic experiment — his cats were transformed from recognizable household pets to creatures one might see in a nightmare. — Consuelo Reed.

                           Melancholy kitty, nice pussy,

sweet pussy.  Purr in a corner; lap up your

                                    milk.  Swish your tail, lie on a rug.

         Pretty cat in a kitchen.  Fur and nice

                  eyes winking slowly, slowly.  Go to

 

                           sleep.  Wake up, cat, your eyes are too bright,

a little.  What dream was it that made your back

         curve that way around a queer corner?  Your

                           ears perk like crooked peaks.  Hackles

                  up, cat; scratch the wall of your saucer.

 

                           Squis'd cat, electrical kitten,

         symmetrics and fall apart.  The paper

room will hold you in place.  Triangular tongue

                  sharp, not rough: Rakes the eyes, laps blackness

                           from a spoon.  Where do your whiskers

 

                  go?  Now, cat, pussy in

a pail, snarl lines and sparks into my ear.  My

                           eyes wail all your pins and dots, my

         tail does flash, flails behind thy riven head.

                  My bowels dissolve,

                                                              dissolve bad puss;

 

                           see, Fyre Catte,

                                                               drink thy

                                                                               nice

                                                                                      Night.

 

From the series “The Compleat Melancholick,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

 

THE NAKED EYE

 

                  The chickens grow very fast —

         I am afraid they will be so large

                  that you cannot perceive them

with the naked eye when you get home.

 

                  The flowers have reached the eaves

         and are heaving against the roof

                  which has begun to buckle —

you will have to do something I fear.

 

                  We had eggs for breakfast or,

         rather, an egg — the yellow yolk

                  ran under the sideboard, and

it stayed there, refusing to come out.

 

                  The cat walking down the stair

         makes a great noise — the banister

                  bulges out as she descends.

The trees in the yard block out the sun —

 

                  we are not sure that the sun

         still regards us in our small world

                  with a great eye fully clothed

in the raiment of its rays and beams.

 

                  We stumble in the shadows.

         The candles speak so slightly that

                  we can hardly hear their words,

and the moss — the moss is at the door.

 

From the series “A Sampler of Hours: Poems from Lines in Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

 

 

POCOANGELINI 28

"You come walking, waltzing in slow time.

Your tongue is a red nettle

ticking my staves.  You are a cat

in a harpsichord," says Pocoangelini,

 

"and your nails on the air's bright strings

thrum my spine's silver song.

You tickle me with tulips.

Like a gray burro

 

"in love with edges, I trot

a gauntlet of notes and pauses —

each with the face of a daisy —

and they ride me to where I am.

 

"How can the purr mate the bray?

I in my rug of years,

you in your silken mantle —

what strange ears would we beget?

 

"If my song wears an old blanket,

it hides young fleas.

My hoof plucks no mandolin.

Listen to this tune, hairy as a donkey."

 

From the series “Pocoangelini: A Fantography” in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

POCOANGELINI 28

 

"You come walking, waltzing in slow time.

Your tongue is a red nettle

ticking my staves.  You are a cat

in a harpsichord," says Pocoangelini,

 

"and your nails on the air's bright strings

thrum my spine's silver song.

You tickle me with tulips.

Like a gray burro

 

"in love with edges, I trot

a gauntlet of notes and pauses —

each with the face of a daisy —

and they ride me to where I am.

 

"How can the purr mate the bray?

I in my rug of years,

you in your silken mantle —

what strange ears would we beget?

 

"If my song wears an old blanket,

it hides young fleas.

My hoof plucks no mandolin.

Listen to this tune, hairy as a donkey."

 

From the series “Pocoangelini: A Fantography” in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

 

CHORALE OF THE CLOCK

"Tic douloureux," pronounced tik doo-loo-roo or tik da-ler-oo in standard and colloquial English respectively, is a very painfully diseased nerve.

 

There was a woman on our block

        (Tick, tock, the town cock crew)

And every dusk she wound the clock

With a large brass key she hid in a sock

        Under the rug by the panel door.

        Then she'd rinse her cup and sweep the floor,

Let out a sigh, the gray cat too —

        Tock, tic douloureux.

 

And when the cat was gone, she'd lock

        (Tick, tock, the town cock crew)

The doors, the windows, the cookie crock,

The casement of the grandfather clock.

        Then she'd hide her key and go up to bed

        To dream in the feathers of her bedstead,

Dark where the canopy nightbird flew —

        Tock, tic douloureux.

 

Still, in her sleep she would mark the clock.

        (Tick, tock, the town cock crew)

Every chime was a mortal shock:

A nerve in her cheek would jerk and knock;

        Something or someone would begin to scream

        As pain spread slowly across her dream,

And she'd start awake with the devil's ague —

        Tock, tic douloureux.

 

All night long she would lie and rock

        (Tick, tock, the town cock crew)

In a boat of shadows at Charon's dock

Hearing the shades on the far side mock,

        Jeering and asking her why she stayed

        So long away.  "I am afraid,"

She said, "of the darkness and of you...."

        Tock, tic douloureux.

"I fear the warden of my clock

        (Tick, tock, the town cock crew)

May some night forget to test its lock;

The convict, discard her prison smock;

        The emptiness of the time I serve

        Burst the manacle of this nerve,

And the walls of my being prove untrue."

        Tock, tic douloureux.

 

        She sighed as she saw the nightbird rise;

        The nerve quit jumping.  She closed her eyes,

And then she lay quiet, still as the dew.

        Tick. Tock.  The town cock crew.

 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953 2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

THE EUNUCH CAT

A Pantoum

 

She went to work until she grew too old,

        Came home at night to feed the eunuch cat

That kept the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.

        She walked, but ran to wrinkles, then to fat,

 

        Came home at night to feed the eunuch cat,

Then went to bed, slept dreamlessly till eight,

        And waked.  She ran to wrinkles, then to fat.

She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,

 

Then went to bed, slept noisily till eight —

        Must I go on?  She'll feed the cat no more.

She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,

        Then died at dawn, just halfway through a snore.

 

        Must I go on? — she'll feed the cat no more

To keep the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.

        She died at dawn, just halfway through a snore;

She went to work until she grew too old.

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953 2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

  

 

Thank you for this.  The award cool. Pookah story beautiful, touching.  All of it - pukka.

Moonlace

  

Lew,

I was not disputing your story at all...I just wanted to add a comment about my puppy.

Just who disputes stories about cat? Animalophobes?

Jerry

 

Lew,

         Enjoyed your memoir and the comments of others. However, I have the greatest cat(s) in the world -- Archie the six-toed wonder and his dainty-footed sister Veronica.

Alice Teeter

 

Alice,

         Pookah has been gone for many years, so his throne has been vacant. It was filled with others for a time: Crazy Cat, a black cat; Sally-Alley Calico; Smoky, who was black also; his companion Bianca, who was white and fluffy, with one yellow-green eye and one blue one; and  most lately Seeger, black and sweet-thorny, and Sweetie-Pie, black but semi-fluffy a bit like Bianca. Sally is buried out in the front yard now in my circle garden with her sign (as in the photo above) lying beneath her.

Lew