TABday Poetry

I'm thinking of changing this first day of the week's name. It will now be known as TABday. Instead of dreading the day, the start of the work week, the return to rush hour traffic jams, sack lunches and mountains of tedium, it'll be a day of poetry and wonder.

Laughs too. And cats. Always with the cats, don'cha know.

My Kat

My kat
looks out the window
Ready for anything
Expecting nothing—
Maybe a nap’ll
Sneak up on him:
He likes those
Slow Surprises.

~ Boston 1/91

This was written for our evil/wonderful thug of an orange tabby, Ralf.

Velveteen Bunny

Dear Ken,
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.
I’m going to New England
where the weather will age me
Punks will upstage me,
and acid rain rot my convertible.
I don’t want to lie fallow
sensational and shallow.
You never asked how I felt when they decided I’d be
a stewardess in ’63
an astronaut, a hippie, in ’73
a doctor, then a disco babe,
aerobics instructor in ’84 –
what a bore –
you accepted it when they rearranged my life,
short-changed my life.
You never wondered what it would be like
to have callouses, pot-bellies, children;
you classed them with career-threatening injuries.
I’ll buy my clothes in Filene’s Basement, go to school,
get a job, hang out at Fenway Park,
let the home team break my heart
every season. I’ll listen to Miles Davis
 and Bonnie Raitt on my walkman in the subway.
No more heavy Mattel music for me.
I want to go to a place where there’ll be
static on the radio, ice on my windshield,
winos and cops in the coffeeshops.
My eyes will bag,
my tits will start to sag,
I’ll curse my cramps and grease out on Burger Death.
Roaches will bring out my killer instinct.
Tell your friends I got a Spiritually Transmitted Disease:
I’m biodegradable now.
I’ve got an urge to take risks, get laid,
rule my life with love.
Sincerely,
Barbie

~ Boston 4/90
  
The Secret

There is a secret which separates me
from the Suits
         from those who delegate
         those who relax and theorize
         those born to luxury
I have the ability to stand naked and alone
         at the center of unutterable bleakness and silence
         entirely alone in an alien and desolate landscape
         without hope of mercy or meaning or redemption
         frozen in the cold heart of darkness and silence
                  and yet continue to function
                  to do what must get done
                  to survive    to survive
                  to stagger on into another hopeless day
And I am marked by this terrible difference,
I can sense in others this ability to survive the horror –
We are brothers and sisters, we walking wounded
We slow healers whose laughter echoes in the abyss
We slow learners who share a determination to put
         one psychic foot in front of the other
         day after day, year after year
         in spite of what we know
this is our stark secret
                  We can survive anything!

~ Boston 12/91