Alienation Effect

As that dreadful
Russian, Shklovsky

Has written one must
Make it strange.
Ostranenie!
Viewing  it all from a new angle
Like this a poem about
A cat writing a poem
By me, Tippy, a little
Meadow Mouse. So
Here goes! What if I?
No, that won't work
Or I could, ah, that's
So done and done.
I know! As soon as
You finish reading
This poem, me, Tippy,
A little meadow mouse

Right now clinging to
The ledge of the Reichstag
As the Red Army advances
Under me will throw myself
Off this horrible building
Down under the treads
Of a Soviet T-34 tank there
To be squished.

This is the cat
Speaking.

 

My Left Foot

Doesn’t work anymore
One day I got out of bed
And it hurt like hell.
It still hurts.
Even with no weight on it.
And when I stand up
I almost begin to limp.
But not so you can tell.
Things fall apart.
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom.

I’m not ready for this.
But I can almost remember
When  “Chookie McCall”
Was not quite an absurd name
For a heroine in a detective novel.
So it’s probably polio
Like we used to have
And soon I’ll be in an Iron Lung
Yes, soon it will be 1958 again
And all my dead will visit me.
Me in my iron lung.
And eat candy and smoke.
While I look at them
Upside down in the mirror
As they get up and walk away.