This journal is mostly public because most of it contains poetry, quotations, pictures, jokes, videos, and news (medical and otherwise). If you like what you see, you are welcome to drop by, anytime. I update frequently.
Layout by
tessisamessCustomized by penaltywaltz
Comments
I love writing from the POV of non-human sentiences, and this is a wonderful example.
~~
and, here you are:
~~~~
From the Point of View of a Cat
This is my Man. I am not afraid of him. He is very strong, for he eats a great deal; he is an Eater of All Things. What are you eating? Give me some!
He is not beautiful, for he has no fur. Not having enough saliva, he has to wash himself with water. He meows in a harsh voice and a great deal more than necessary. Sometimes in his sleep he purrs.
Let me out!
I don't know how he has made himself master; perhaps he has eaten something sublime.
He keeps my rooms clean for me.
In his paws he carries a sharp black claw and he scratches with it on white sheets of paper. That is the only game he plays. He sleeps at night instead of by day, he cannot see in the dark, he has no pleasures. He never thinks of blood, never dreams of hunting or fighting; he never sings songs of love.
Often at night when _I_ can hear mysterious and magic voices, when _I_ can see that the darkness is all alive, _he_ sits at the table with his head bent and goes on and on, scratching with his black claw on the white papers. Don't imagine that I am at all interested in you. I am only listening to the soft whispering of your claw. Sometimes the whispering is silent, the poor dull head does not know how to go on playing, and then I am sorry for him and I meow softly in sweet and sharp discord. Then my Man picks me up and buries his hot face in my fur. At those times he divines for an instant a glimpse of a higher life, and he sighs with happiness and purrs something which can almost be understood.
But don't think that I am at all interested in you. You have warmed me, and now I will go out again and listen to the dark voices.
(Karel Chapek, translated by Dora Round, revised by the editor. Originally published in "Intimate Things", 1935)
~~
beams and hugs you gratefully
I am saving this to send out to people!
My pleasure! :)
Hugs back
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.
By Marge Piercy
Thanks for showing me this poem, not come across it before :)