Looking for Pussy

My wife is going to divorce me
she is going to kill me then she is going to divorce me

You think this is allegory
this happened

They wanna
talk about confessional poetry
Well…here she blows

Yesterday she told me she hated me
because I screamed in horror when
she rolled onto one of my books

I also slapped her on the back.

After that, who cares if I called her a bitch in jest?

She feels I am cheating
on her
when I read,
write or masturbate.

You see:
virginity

I was 27
before I got
bagged by a whore
When my penis
had her out-of-body
experience
and lost her
mass/energy
body/soul
particle/wave
I mean:
I couldn’t wake the dead and scared
rather:
There was a limp laughter
in my bed

On the other hand:
my wife despises me
because I took
her virginity.

She says I make her feel dirty.

Anyway my wife
is
off at work
when
I hear a scream.

I am undressed,
and outside,
it is sunny and cold.
For weeks my cat
Ding has refused to come in.
She has lost weight.
I sometimes find her on the roof
meowing at me passionately,
strangely distant.
I am undressed
and I step into the cold sun.
I round the bend and my cat is getting laid.
She screams.
She is mad because I scare her lover off,
and I am jealous because
she is making love.

And like they say:
when the cats away
the pussy will play.

I get dressed
I take a nap
I wake

Then it dawns on me:
I left the door open.

My wife’s cat
is an indoor
cat who’s
never been
outside.

Not anymore.

I search the house
twice over.
all 4000 feet

I go outside.

For three blocks in every direction,
For three hours,
I policed shrubs
porches
under RV’s
alleys

The neighbors see me coming to their door
and would be like
Who is this head case?
hair looking like a grease fire
and stammering
because I seldom finish sentences
[that’s why I write]
I said:
Stark White Cat Lost, Potential Ex-Wife going to trash husband
but I really said…
and scared kids
and saw only two cats [in the alley]

Nothing I do seems to come out right; 1
wherever I go I get pushed around.
I walk the muddy road and my footsteps
falter;
I sit with the other villagers and my
stomach aches with hunger
Since I lost the brindle cat,
the rats come right up and peer into
the pot
A cat, 10
a native of Saturn,
crosses the wall and vanishes
in the pages of a book.
Grass turns to night,
night turns to sand,
sand turns to water
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand, 17
The Hopes so juicy ripening -
You almost bathed your Tongue - D
and after speaking to no one, 20
stretch myself over the world,
over roofs and landscapes,
with a passionate desire
to hunt the rats in my dreams.
Not that the cats are puppets. 25
Far from it.
They are living, breathing creatures,
and when any other being is contacted,
it is sad:
because you see the limitations,
the pain and fear and the final death.
That is what contact means.
That is what I see when I touch a cat
and find that tears are flowing down my face
Now Dogs pretend they like to fight; 35
They often bark, more seldom bite;
But yet a Dog is, on the whole,
What you would call a simple soul
Self-reliant like the cat-- 39
that takes its prey to privacy
And so we saw 41
And we conquered
And we came,
While the black cat watched
Turned dead white! 45
Boogie-woogie,
Rolling bass,
Whirling treble
of cat-gut lace
And like a Rocky Mountain cat 50
Making all spheres stink!
Yet at his death, O Lord,
May some prayer rise up!

And so after three
long
cotton mouthed
ours
I searched the house
again.
I found pussy
in the closet
she was
there at home
all the time.

Waiting.

This is what
love
is.




{The numbered stanza was plagiarized from the following: 1-9 Han Shan; 10-16 Octavio Paz; 17-19 Emily Dickenson; 20-24 Pablo Neruda; 25-34 William S Burroughs; 35-38 TS Eliot; 39-40 Marianne Moore; 41-44 Rachel Swiss; 45-49 Langston Hughes; 50-53 Rimbaud}