Cat in the hat n some doggeral

Aren't these pictures a hoot? They are Laura's very unhappy cat in a fish hat. He doesn't care that he looks cute, although he does. He looks mad as heck. Poor little kitty, wearing red fish blue fish. Wonder if he likes green eggs n ham?

I actually got time today to run through my poetry book manuscript in an editor-ish manner. It was the first time this entire month that I've had more than few minutes to sit creatively at my keyboard doing something just for myself. I long for the days (to come again) when I can sit and write all day long if I want to. Hopefully, that will happen by this June. In any case, I think the book is close to finished. Maybe write a few more poems, but its all formatted and titled and I've got the cover idea.

Since Chili's been injured again and in hospital to the tune of a few more bucks, I thought I'd post a poem I wrote in her honor two years ago. With Chili, its always some drama. Here's the poem:


Luckily

By Nancy Wayman Deutsch

You didn’t die this time, luckily,
although the doctor spoke of esophageal tears,
intestinal blockage, or possible pancreatic disease.
It cost five hundred dollars for x-rays and fluid bags and blood work
some pills that I had to hide in canned food rolled like a meatball.
But luckily, it was just a bad case of gastroenteritis.

Luckily, when you threw up next to me I was already sitting,
so I didn’t plop down in the slimy black green mess
which looked like a toxic dump in a third world country
and smelled worse than a baby’s dirty diaper.
You chose my new plaid sofa to throw up on,
but luckily, I’d put a blanket over the cushions,
and paid extra, for Scotchguard.

You didn’t die, this time.
Maybe next time though, you will
if you keep eating carpet in the bedroom doorway,
if you keep opening up the kitchen cabinet door,
sticking your head into the garbage can
gobbling up week old turkey and green bean casserole,
the one made with the onions toxic to normal dogs,
but maybe not to one like you,
one who had dingos scratching fleas
underneath her family tree, not so long ago.

You snatch a chicken bone,
hiding underneath the ivy in the neighbors yard
swallowing it faster than light speed, not concerned at all
for brittle bones that choke and poke inside a little dog,
ripping tender parts that never designed for such treats.

You are not supposed to swallow the squeakers inside the fluffy duck
nor chew the rubbery cord snaking from the lamp you knocked over,
or lick the toad in the Mondo grass beside the garage.
Come to think of it, you are not supposed to eat the grass, either.
But you do. You always do the first thing that crosses your little doggy mind.
That’s how you broke your hip, wrestling with a pit bull
the one who outweighs you by seventy pounds of solid muscle.

Luckily for me and luckily for you, up to now
it seems you have a guardian angel.
Maybe it’s Belle, looking down from the rainbow bridge
trying somehow to make good on a job not finished.

So, luckily, you didn’t die last week.
I wish I could make you understand
but we don’t speak the same language
I think in words and you think in smells
if you really think, at all.

I’m only trying to keep you alive
and its not easy, might as well stop a hurricane in its path
or convince the earth to stand still on its axis.
I’m only trying to keep you alive
so I can have the time to love you.

So you can twist my heart in ten years or so
when you give me the final surprise and die, like Belle
on a Sunday night between twelve and twelve-o-five,
heartbeat stopping, between a whimper and a sigh.

All for tonight my little Bloggers. Live long and prosper.