waxing nostalgiac for Ogden Nash?
POETRY
by
DAVID LIEBER
________________
David
Lieber is a writer and translator living in Montreal.
FOR
PABLITO
A poem
to my resident cat is in order
A cat from up north, not down south, of the border
For reasons beyond me I named him Pablito
A tag far more common in Cali or Quito.
He squanders his days at an indolent pace
And when each is over, he sleeps on my face
Just an inch from the TV when we watch the news
But can't see the fine line between Arabs and Jews.
But as if there were not enough shit in this world
What Pablito contributes is rare as a pearl
Though recession and joblessness cripple the nation
The bane of this household is cat constipation.
A beautiful feline by any description
His downside’s his sphincter, a chronic condition
It’s called megacolon and that’s what he’s
got
For his bowels expand but his rosebud does not.
The exit’s too small and the hallway too spacious
He squats in his box and the straining’s loquacious
He straddles the floor and the sight’d be funny
Except that to flush him out costs so much money.
He sees us ahead of the rest of his patients
‘Cause we underwrite the vet’s lavish vacations
When he sees us coming, he brings out the tube
Some disposable gloves and the pan and the lube.
Two hundred bucks later, Pablito’s in heaven
(The cat’s a foot long; his intestines are seven)
He sniffs at the product; he’s proud of his work
It’s a beast of a job but the sniffs are a perk.
He's a very clean cat, so it's all the more heinous
His kisses are liable to taste like his anus
Spread-eagled with tongue planted firmly in ass
It may seem, at first glance, like an absence of class.
But the passion is strong and it’s long, unrelenting,
When cats and their ani are freely consenting
And if, as you watch, they seems overly zealous
Some level pre-oedipal’s secretly jealous.
As
for his condition, prognosis is poor
But one thing is for certain: his job is secure
He gets me to write, which curtails the booze
And he knows from an asshole in need of a muse.
