Saturday, February 6, 2016

February Poetry

February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Winter. Time to eat fat 
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   
a black fur sausage with yellow 
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   
to get onto my head. It’s his 
way of telling whether or not I’m dead. 
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   
He’ll think of something. He settles 
on my chest, breathing his breath 
of burped-up meat and musty sofas, 
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off 
in the long run. Some cat owners around here   
should snip a few testicles. If we wise   
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   
or eat our young, like sharks. 
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine 
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   
thirty below, and pollution pours 
out of our chimneys to keep us warm. 
February, month of despair, 
with a skewered heart in the centre. 
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   
with a splash of vinegar. 
Cat, enough of your greedy whining 
and your small pink bumhole. 
Off my face! You’re the life principle, 
more or less, so get going 
on a little optimism around here. 
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

2 comments:

Hootin Anni said...

Great!!! Descriptive prose. You had me there.

But....vinegar on french fries? That's a new concept for me.

Rambling Woods said...

We should eat our young.... Lol