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Sunday 18 April 2010

NaPoWriMo 2010 Day 18

NAPOWRIMO 2010 DAY 18
MEOW!
“I’m cursed. I’m a tiger,” says Read Write Poem member Irene. She’s talking about the Year of the Tiger, and it’s the inspiration for her NaPoWriMo prompt:
The tiger is a creature known to create wildness and tumult. In Chinese superstition, it is not a year to marry or have children. The tiger is too aggressive. It stalks and preys.
Write a poem featuring the cat family, whether big or small.
There are many cat poems that may inspire you. The first poem that comes to mind, William Blake’s “The Tyger,” wonders why such a creature is created in the first place. Did such a creation come from the Devil himself? God will only create a lamb, right?
Ted Hughes wrote about the jaguar, a not-so-distant cousin. I think a jaguar looks even more fearsome. There’s a playful feline quality about the tiger. Not so with a jaguar! It is like black rage. I’ve seen a jaguar in a zoo, pacing endlessly in its cage. Here’s how Hughes wrote it, in “The Jaguar,” “He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him” and “his stride is wildernesses of freedom.”
Then there’s the pussy cat. In “Esther’s Tomcat,” also by Hughes, the cat becomes, in a figurative sense, the protagonist, the beleaguered husband. Hughes describes him as “an old rough mat” and reveals, “Continual wars and wives are what/ Have tattered his ears and battered his head.”
Is that enough to go on? Roar! Purr! (You choose.)
HERE'S MINE:
EH EYE OH MEOW
Katz dangle marmalade
doorsteps from upstairs
windows on fishing wire.
The backyard bees don’t
give a buzz, but the Kool
Katz still catch the odd wasp.
The city fox is sly, but the
alley cat is king of the cobbles.
18042+10



Y
Y
Y
WHY
Y
charcoal grey
lava clad sky
snow black peppery
that’s why
birds don’t fly

 bees are busy
wasps get dizzy
sneezey cheesey
that’s why
they buzz by

fix wing no fly
flap wing no fly
rotary helicopter okay
that’s why
they buzz by

shivery day
grey soupy sky
from geezer country
that’s why
birds don’t fly
           18042+10/1 

8 comments:

  1. Andy,
    I love "eh eye oh meow"
    Yes the alley cat is always in charge.
    Pamela

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  2. glad to have stopped by... i love this format flyin and bussin things galore!!! here kitty kitty

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  3. glad to have stopped by... i love this format flyin and bussin things galore!!! here kitty kitty

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  4. y-not?
    love the fishing wire. what would you catch with a marmalade doorstep?

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  5. There are Cool Cats and Kool Kats near you - at least there used to be.

    I never realised how much it had affected, till I saw the news yesterday.

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  6. I like the loopy playful stream of consciousness of your poems here - well, it may be conscious and thoroughly worked and edited. Some very nice wordplay and images here, I especially like the "soup - geezer" image at the end of your second poem!

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  7. Very whimsical!

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  8. Thanks everybody,!

    A marmalade doorstep is a thick marmalade sandwich that the kids from the Kool Katz gang used to dangle from a fishing line to attract wasps.

    ReplyDelete

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