Mouse Eats Cat
He a white mouse
Eats white house-
Cloned in conspiracy
Trump, card a covenant
Put’in, entraped first lady
His vendetta led coventry
He in nature a rat its modern,
Spread bubonic plague
He a black death;
Cowboy, his coven are
Lynchpin causing
A lymph node in lynx
Bob cat in burial ceremony
By the lynch mob
©Vijay P Nair -2017
GIVE ROMANCE A CHANCE
A Belated Appraisal of “Still Life With Woodpecker,” by Tom Robbins
“Unwilling to wait for mankind to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here.”
—Bernard Mickey Wrangle
In 1980, Ronald Reagan became POTUS, MTV turned negative one, & Tom Robbins published Still Life With Woodpecker. Peradventure, your mother was a Tom Robbins fan when you were growing up. You remember his books & their quirky titles — Skinny Legs And All, Jitterbug Perfume — & Uma Thurman as a hitchhiker with prosthetically enlarged thumbs in the film adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. You may have borrowed your mom’s copy of Even Cowgirls the novel, on the pretext of reading it, but being an adolescent at the time, all you really did was flip through the pages looking for sex scenes.
So, you nearly missed the Tom Robbins express train to cult literary Nirvana. Luckily, in your present life as a grownup in a whole new millennium, you chance upon a rack-size paperback of Still Life With Woodpecker, from a free pile or tiny library, & take it home to read. Suddenly, your mother’s enthusiasm all those years ago comes back, & makes perfect sense. You are soon hooked by this winsome yarn about a wayward modern princess named Leigh-Cheri, on the cusp of adulthood, who breaks away from her punctilious parents for a fateful sojourn on Maui.
“Who knows how to make love stay?” That’s the question asked early on & woven through the novel. We are invited to ponder the fleeting & elusive quality of love, why we can’t hold on to the first rush of connection & stay in love, forever. At the core of Still Life With Woodpecker is a love story, irreverently told by the inimitable Tom Robbins, comprising equal parts oldfashioned storybook romance, Greco-Shakespearean tragedy, Lady & the Tramp, & Bonnie & Clyde. This love story begins & ends with a bang, literally, in the form of dynamite. It dispenses with sentiment, skips over courtship, & cuts to the chase. If you’re a reader of warped sensibility who usually spurns romance, given what it signifies as a modern literary genre, here is an alternative romance that may suit your taste.
6.7
NOT ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE!, he yelled,
standing up
and shaking all over like Elvis
his family gathered around the dinner table
doing their best to ignore him
as he grabbed a broom
from the hall closet
and ran around jiggling all the light fixtures
on the ceiling.
When it was over
he sat back down to
dinner.
Passing the dinner rolls,
a perfect gentleman.
The threat of aftershocks
ever present.
Try Smile
When you labor from dusk to dawn
Sleeping only for some hours till morn,
When you watch your hands tremble from cramp
And cold sweat makes your cloth damp,
When a trace of grin darkens your face
And in gloom blues you seek solace,
When you watch vain results pile:
Still from within, try a smile.
When for a thousand life pays a buck
And you feel nothing seems to work,
When you lie on the brink of desperation
Seeking your way through strong meditation,
With closed eyes, yet seeking, all you can find
And thousand thoughts flood your pale mind,
As fickle fortune ease you where you lie,
Invictus you are, when you smile.
Against the fierceness of a million raging storms,
And the cataclysm raining down to burn,
Against the future that seem very bleak,
And the fiascos making your bones creak,
As the moon reflects in perfect radiance
Against the damp night in sweet defiance,
The bitterness that engulf you like bile
Can you courageously fight, with a smile.
For I know a smile can:
With the fury of ten thousand swords
Pierce through the marrow of mocking words;
With the warm Aura of the sun
Draw you positive people for your sun
With the attractiveness of a maiden
Get you prompt help for a farthing;
Cause you to sing while tackling the thing
And do what you thought you couldn’t.
1. Unrequited Love
Lonely teardrops flow through my eyes,
dampening my aching heart
that beats only for you beloved
as we are drifted apart.
A restless thought gnaws at my mind_
When will our restless souls meet?
The trepidation of uncertainty
numbs my senses.
As I feel a kiss of your breath,
a rapturous joy envelops me
drowning me in a tumultuous ocean,
flowing through my being.
My feelings are tearing me apart
like the waves that treacherously depart
from the bed of the sifting sands.
Haunting thoughts of you that lie deep within
linger on unabatedly.
I ponder, I brood, I moan.
A warm silence palpitates and sweeps
through the flickering, aromatic candlelight.
I pause to wonder_
Could you be thinking of me too?
The magical moments of our love enshrined, revisited.
The passion of our love unrequited.