Window Sill

My cat found her haven on the window sill.

Writing 201: Future

The future starts in the past

The past ends in the future

Your first rites turn into your last

The moment you cease to nurture

 

Cherish yourself as the first

No one knows you but you

How you bury in you the worst

And shy away from the best too

 

The worst ordeal is the middle

Plodding through the dull present

Allow your best virtue, your worst evil

Only the mediocre are wholly decent

 

The future begins in your first breath

The past is the moment of your death

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reward

My reward for anything is that I have a cosy home and a domestic cat in it to return to, unlike this skinny stray thing of a cat spotted in a hospital complex. In response to WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Reward.

Men and Cats, Cats and Men

This is the crazy cat lady’s heaven.

A rocker rocks a cat

Crazy cat gentleman

Writing 201: Landscape

This is a poem found entirely in Robert Crawford’s monograph On Glasgow and Edinburgh (2013).

 
On Glasgow and Edinburgh by Robert Crawford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Carefully researched and attractively written, this is a highly informative and insightful guide to both cities on their own and in contrast with each other.

 

The Athens of the North:

Encyclopaedia Britannica,

Edinburgh Review,

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,

Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal.

 

Here I stand at

The Cross of Edinburgh,

And can, in a few minutes, take

Fifty men of genius and learning by the hand.

 

A city of grand,

Often riverless bridges;

Some historic streets are windswept

In their elevation,

Others oddly and fascinatingly

Sunken.

 

Mary King’s Close,

Beneath the Royal Mile’s City Chambers,

Has a haunted, museum-like stillness.

 

A museum exhibit,

A splendid stage set,

A wonderful museum of itself.

Writing 201: Drawer

Behold

Oh, drawer, what treasures you hold

Buried in sand, dirt or clay

To be scooped out every day

I can smell the scent

Of a present

Left by my cat, the cunning fox

In the drawer of her litter box

Writing 201: Fingers

Thick, short, cold fingers digging in the thin, soft, warm skin. Digging, ripping, tearing like claws, knives, forks. The flesh splitting, yielding, giving in – unfeeling, uncaring, dead meat. This is him eating his chicken meal.

Simple Symmetry

Corner

Twin Windows

Peek

Ex

Railway under Reconstruction

Lit Tunnel

Rusty Fence

A Window with a Fan

Writing 201: Hero(ine)

A hero began

As everyman

 

Everyman grew up

Everyman broke up

Everyman sobered up

 

Becoming bitter and brave

Daring to kill the ill

The ill that never will

Live again good and brave

 

A hero became

A hero went and

Fell

Dead

 

Everyman ends

As a hero

Emancipation Declaration

Thoughts you think when tied to the sink

Ambition, aspiration, art

Life, love, liberty

Put an end to it

Already

 

You slit

Your wrists