In digging myself out from under the past 10 years of papers I'm not sure why I keep, I ran across this poem and was about to throw it away when I realized that I really liked it for good reason and, rather than take up more paperspace when the thing could be recycled, I'd just put it online for people to discover and enjoy or else despise but at least it's all electronic now.
Curiosity
may have killed the cat. More likely,
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.
Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
to smell rats, leave home, have hunches,
does not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurous heads and tails.
Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die --
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or the improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have if they live a tale
worth telling at all.
Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible
are dangerous, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat-price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat-minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth; and what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who never know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.
-- Alastair Reid
Comparing and contrasting sensationalism, insulting vs. insipid:
my two current books are nothing but overdoses of melodrama to the tenth power---but both reside on the complete opposite ends of the gender spectrum.
My first is a book about the R.U.C. (royal ulster constabulary) and is little more than a compilation of anecdotes from this man's career, thinly veiled as a novel depicting the goings-on of one almost Robo-Copesque inspector whose tactics are uncannily flawless and whose humanity I continue to question. I have a hard time believing that he has been so dead-on throughout his tenure with this crack-team of SS-type guards. As much as I've been railing against the undue accumulation of power by the Dept. of Defense and the U.S. gov't in general, I very much appreciate the rights exercised by American citizens as set down in our constitution, which make search and seizure, w/out a warrant, screamingly illegal. Oh, and I dig the fact that we get to choose the timing of our own auto-inspections and are not subjected to random roadstops where you get cited for having bald tires. Regardless, my opinions are diametrically opposed to those of my author's and I'm having a hard time not only editing his bleeding run-on sentences but simply reading his drivel which echo with a longing for the good ol' martial law days.
My
second book is an estrogen-riddled mini-soap opera which will defile the dignity of the paper it's printed upon from the moment it comes out. And I thought I liked Canadians...this is not an invective against all Canadians, as I'm fond of hockey and good beer and men who speak with a rising inflection at the end of their sentences (oh, and say "eh" without even realizing it). But this uber-heartwrenching story about a girl who becomes pregnant with her dying poet of a best friend's baby is disgusting, particularly as they spend the entire story hanging all over each other and fondling each other under the pretext of being best friends. And the fact that he's not in love with her but is instead in love with some exotic princess of an Egyptian, and the fact that his brother is the one in love with the heroine---and the heroine's mother is an uber-bitch who beats her for getting pregnant and the poet's father is emotionally frigid and withdrawn, leaving the poet to suffer the cold lonely winter of love-starvation,
christ!!!!!!!!!! Paging
As the goddamned World Turns!! And can i just say that, for a straight poet, the descriptions of this dude's outfit would make normal men think he's gay, and gay men shudder with disgust.
there's no balance here. I'm bouncing back and forth between the two, but when 1 is rife with run-on sentences and 2 seems unable to properly spell the word "yeah," it's questionable as to whether i shall retain my sanity.
Oh, glory. Save me, Jeebus.
