japonisme: dancing from cats

30 October 2010

dancing from cats


THE CAT'S SONG

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture
of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm
........mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run.. up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes.
I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

Marge Piercy

The cat’s song from Mars & Her Children (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). First appeared in Matrix 28 (Spring 1989). Copyright © 1989, 1992 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc.


(this halloween, learn to dance)

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4 Comments:

Blogger Dominic Bugatto said...

Fun post.

04 November, 2010 09:26  
Blogger lotusgreen said...

thanks, my friend.

04 November, 2010 11:01  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very much fun. Yes. The video had me cackling, the posters are beautiful, and even though I'm not a 'cat-person' I've been around enough of them to feel the text ring true.
I hope you had a great Halloween. I was at a Renaissance Festival wedding dressed as Dr. Schnabel von Romo! :-)

24 November, 2010 10:14  
Blogger lotusgreen said...

well, i had to go look it up, but...... how cool!!!!

24 November, 2010 13:35  

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hi, and thanks so much for stopping by. i spend all too much time thinking my own thoughts about this stuff, so please tell me yours. i thrive on the exchange!

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