Cat Paradise; with apologies to The Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson

The Pussy-Cat of Paradise

“O Rebecca”
calling in the night push-push

I chased her, down the stairway of days and up
the veils of night, I chased

until chastened but not caught,
not in my arms;
there was nothing
Only nothing

I searched for her
Listened for the sound of eyelids opening
and for the songs of cats in love
My ear peeled, my keening throughout the house,
creating the house,
I searched.

I pled, I begged like an outlaw caught
with his red hand in a bucket of greed.
I pleaded for the tender mercies for me, and
all about me,
everyone everywhere could hear this oyez plea!

For though I knew love, I did not know I knew,
and knew not how
new love would know.

Or having love, I dreaded what else I must have.
For so often
You get what you never saw
And scratched by its paw.

Was searching so,
through a window darkly for the black cat of love,
dressed to the nines of its liquid life
as Love to pursue
the little spotted margay
So troubling the bear at the gateway of the stars
or the jawed jaguar
Wrestling the alligator of our intermittencies
searching for the furred stop, the rejoinder,
with the mystery of its passion,
frisking the feathers of hope with its love of risk.
I searched on full moon nights the pale ports of mystery.
The shut doors of pure unholy ignorance,
gob-smacked down
the empty halls of cold marble
harked to the echo of distant trumpets
Gone smoking astray

I said to Dusk: be quick – to Dawn: be soon;
With the scattered rose find me one tremendous Lover,
heaping with blossoms
Float this veil and sail the carpetings of magic things
to the solid hearth
Where the heart’s content will lay down among its cats.
Their truth, their soi-disant claims to simplicity.

Only I clung to the whistling dark.
There was no answering purred remark.

I said to the world: be still – to its turning: stop.
With the twine of caresses not yet receiving
did I yearn for Love’s redeeming.
Lip to lip, the soft keening breath.
Be still. And yet, it did not stop.
Lucent-weeping yet, it only promised tears are wet.
The wind-walled palace of my hopes
were spiraled out in milky tropes.

All willful seem the clouds to be
how awful the snortings of the sea
And all that’s born and dies
comes face to face with skies
of possibility and doom.
Felt a failure, the search was done;
hoped for all, but found none.
I was heavy with the Even
and surrounded by the lonely blue shadowings
of cathode rays
around the day’s dead sanctity.

Then, BOOM!
You landed as if from the sea.
Rebecca mustered my commingling heats
gathered up the fur
the push-push and curling tail, so curing
the human smart.
Now, let Love live, who lives Love.
Cat my paradise.

Poem, of something rising

Oyez! All Beloved who gather here
Listen
    is how the dream began
You striding across the Campo
down by the school-yard
And I opening
    the heavy doors of a dark prism

Oyez!  Beloved, it appeared, as if
    the wood horses stopped in their grazing among the trees
being wheeled aside and light fell deep in the knell
to wolf and bear witness, as war burst out
of the belly up to the Bar.

I saw you as if a fragrance of my youth
    had been spilt and splintered
upon the gold and scarlet song of a sunset.

I rode hard and wet upon the galloping emu of my hopes and found you feathers
and all perched and dry high among the rafters of birds winging back and forth
between the mud and the sky

Love comes in a dream to the bridging of us
    to the meet of our desire
where you are this Appaloosa of my eye,
this reigning rein pulling an erasure across
my spotted memory of women who came and went,
    and now is a tower together.

In my dream you were a moon beam
    stuffed with personality like a congress making sausages,
a tube of round light being squeezed together from pig’s lips
and a turkey gobbling a language
    and I dreamt I woke baffled
    in the batter of something
        Rising 

What is the effect of Love?

Love is something
that fills. I am bulging.

It means union can be taken
seriously, even when expressed
improbably
speechlessly
in the yearnings of skin and
braided bone.

Love reaches down the throat and
seizes the heart, grabs, and
pulls hard.

I am inside out.

Cat Paradise; with apologies to The Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson

The Pussy-Cat of Paradise

Calling in the night push-push

I chased her, down the stairway of days and up
the veils of night, I chased

until chastened but not caught,
not in my arms;
there was nothing
Only nothing

I searched for her
Listened for the sound of eyelids opening
and for the songs of cats in love
My ear peeled, my keening throughout the house,
creating the house,
I searched.

I pled, I begged like an outlaw caught
with his red hand in a bucket of greed.
I pleaded for the tender mercies, all for me, and
all about me,
everyone everywhere could hear this oyez plea!

For though I knew love, I did not know I knew,
and knew not how
new love would know.

Or having love, I dreaded what else I must have.
For so often
You get what you never saw
And scratched by its paw.

Was searching so,
through a window darkly for the black cat of love,
dressed to the nines of its liquid life
As Love to pursue
the little spotted margay
so troubling the bear at the gateway of the stars
or the jawed jaguar
Wrestling the alligator of our intermittencies
searching for the furred stop, the rejoinder,
with the mystery of its passion,
frisking the feathers of hope with its love of risk.

I searched on full moon nights the pale ports of mystery.
The shut doors of pure unholy ignorance,
gob-smacked down
the empty halls of cold marble
harked to the echo of distant trumpets
Gone smoking astray

I said to Dusk: be quick – to Dawn: be soon;
With the scattered rose find me one tremendous Lover,
heaping with blossoms
Float this veil and sail the carpetings of magic things
to the solid hearth
Where the heart’s content will lay down among its cats.
Their truth, their soi-disant claims to simplicity.

Only I clung to the whistling dark.
There was no answering purred remark.

I said to the world: be still – to its turning: stop.
With the twine of caresses not yet receiving
did I yearn for Love’s redeeming.
Lip to lip, the soft keening breath.
Be still. And yet, it did not stop.
Lucent-weeping yet, it only promised tears are wet.
The wind-walled palace of my hopes
were spiraled out in milky tropes.

All willful seem the clouds to be
how awful the snortings of the sea
And all that’s born and dies
comes face to face with skies
of possibility and doom.
Felt a failure, the search was done;
hoped for all, but found none.
I was heavy with the Even
and surrounded by the lonely blue shadowings
of cathode rays
around the day’s dead sanctity.

Then, BOOM!
You landed as if from the sea.
You mustered my commingling heats
gathered up the fur
the push-push and curling tail, so curing
the human smart.
Now, let Love live, who lives Love.
Cat my paradise.