So, in my last post, I talked about writing some bad poetry about my old gas stove and my new kitty statue.
I need silly today. I’m tired of the other stuff. Just for right now.
No Chef, No Magic
Nothing beats
cooking with gas.
As long as the stove is not a 1980’s dinosaur.
This stove, my stove
claims to be a Magic Chef.
There is no magic. There is no chef.
The oven lies about it’s heat
by around 50 degrees
As far as we can tell.
Which works fine for casseroles.
But baking?
Baking requires specific and even oven temps.
What this stove did
to a batch of brownies
Is a sin against god and nature.
Soon, you will be gone.
Replaced.
A shiny stove with an impressive top
That will give the impression I am
a better cook than I am.
You will be hauled away
from your only home.
And left to rust for all of eternity
with dryers and freezers.
Cold.
Alone.
Unused.
Forever.
Which is what you get
for what you did the brownies.
Tall, Skinny Kitty
Nothing about you
speaks of Christmas.
But Christmas is a part of you.
Because this Christmas
Everyone in my family bought me cat presents. 
I did not know
that Christmas number 55
is the cat Christmas.
Even my husband participated.
With a kitty shot glass
and a kitty coffee mug with a kitty flipping the bird.
And the tall, skinny cat.
He came from my sister
The tall skinny cat lives in my bedroom
He stares.
He sparkles.
His expression is between compassionate
and ax murderer.
He is here to stay.
Yet, I haven’t removed the plastic tag
that Home Goods or Bed, Bath and Beyond
put around his neck.
I should probably do that.
Cat Christmas is amazing.
Okay, that’s enough bad poetry and silliness. Let’s get back to the shitshow!!
Can i play? Here’s 3 short “kitty ditties” as i call them…
cats are locked out so they can’t see
Who’s more frightened you or me (me me me me me)
^^^With apologies to English Beat
——————-
I looked in the food bowl (da na na nah)
empty as it could be (da na na nah)
there’s nothing to do now (da na na nah)
but meow all morning until it is 3 … (a.m. baby), i got the food bowl blues…. oh yeah! I got the food bowl blues!
—————————-
click click click click
across the kitchen floor
click click click click
to stare through the back door
click click click click
the sound of my sharp paws
click click click click
it’s time to clip my claws
——————————-
Cat on my back
You have pokey paws
I love your gigantic purr
But get those toes out of my ribs
Whoops that needed more editing. I meant to cut off the first filk.
I Love tall skinny cat! <3
Your ode to a gas stove made my day.
As a cat lover all things cat are wonderful including your poetry. A scrapper may love your Magic Chef.
I love this poetry more than words can say. My cat was lost for 5 days after a rainstorm that had wicked loud thunder. Thunderstorms are rare in Los Angeles, but this thunder was back-East loud. The cat freaked and hid for so long we were getting worried. When I told my dad Henry had finally come home, he joked, “hope he didn’t come home pregnant.” I mused over what it would take for a neutered, male cat to come home pregnant. So I started to compose an ode to “Henry, the Hermaphroditty Kitty.” Not sure about the rest, but the last line is: “The kittens arrived on Saturday, and just to be safe, they’ll be neutered AND spayed, ’cause some cats are born to swing both ways, like Henry, the hermaphroditty kitty.”
Hahahahaha. You just made my Monday so much better. Now I’ll have to imagine the rest of that poem which must also have music so I can sing about Henry.
Love, love your poems. I get the stove…Love your kitty statue. I am a dog person. I have never owned a cat. I have always thought they were assholes. I guess they are but that is part of their charm. I won’t say I never will own one, I love tuxedo cats. However, to get through the stress of daily life I watch cat videos. I am obsessed! (Lots of stress)
I have decided animals are just as weird as people. I didn’t say immoral, I said weird.
Do you realize the Designated Survivor (yes there really is one) during the State of the Union address was Rick Perry? We had him as a governor. You have seen him in action during debates, OMG!! Where are the cat videos?!?!
This is some amazingly good bad poetry. Actually call it bad poetry if you want but I think it’s brilliant. The lines “His expression is between compassionate/and ax murderer” would have gotten an A in any creative writing class I took.
Well, almost any. I had one creative writing teacher who never read anything anyone in the class wrote but sort of half listened to us read our works and then would tell us how Shakespeare had written on the same subject and done it much better. I learned a valuable lesson from that: writing like Shakespeare is fine if you’re Shakespeare, but it’s much better to write like you.
When I did home delivery of furniture and appliances, we sold the haul-aways to a used appliance dealer, so your Magic Chef may get refurbished (isn’t that a great word?) and find a new home.
As I remember it, there was a market for older stoves and ovens. We once got $400 for a Wedgewood that didn’t even work…
Your cat gifts remind me of when my mother took up spinning wool into yarn to knit with. Everyone gave her sheep. Sheep pillows, sheep t-shirts, fluffy little sheep figurines, and even a little glass diorama of tiny glass sheep being guarded by a tiny glass sheepdog.
Then one day she noticed that the sheep gifts were taking up more room than her actual spinning supplies and she said “Enough with the sheep already! If you want to give me sheep, how about giving me some nice wool that I can spin into yarn and make something out of?”
The resulting blob of wool was large and nice enough that I ended up getting a fisherman’s knit sweater out of it that I wore for years and years. Nothing was better on a motorcycle on the freeway than that sweater under a leather jacket.
The axe-murderer thing only becomes a problem with cats if they grow thumbs, but as they already come stock with razors on their toes, that doesn’t seem too likely.
I feel the the same way about my stove!
Brava!
I must admit I kinda felt bad for the oven, until you reminded us what it did to the brownies! Off with its…uh…knobs
Don’t fuck with brownies and not expect to be exiled.
Love ‘I did not know that Christmas number 55 was the cat Christmas’- so funny! And an oven that cannot bake the basics? I could not survive that.
My cat Harry (Best Cat Ever, RIP) loved to snuggle into my hair and drool. This inspired me to write “The Twenty-Purred Psalm” which included the line “He anointeth my head with drool”.
Also you have to know that once you have a cat, especially if you are a woman of Mature Years, everybody will give you cat things. It’s a Moral Imperative, or something like that.
Ha ha ha, I love this. I have an oven like that too, sadly I’m stuck with it. As for cat ornaments, for me that was the Christmas of 2009.
All you people are lovely. And I love the tall skinny cat. I’d keep him, too. Happy Weekend!
Thank you!!!
I love both of these poems! I had a Creative Writing class in college (who didn’t?), and when we got to poetry, I wrote the class’ favorite, “Why I Hate Poetry” (or something to that effect). I also remember writing a poem that was essentially along the lines of “Fuck Off, Creepy Dude” (which played well among the female classmates).
I read both of YOUR poems aloud to my husband, and even though he’s approaching his 55th birthday, we’ve already missed his 55th Christmas, so I guess we’ll have to wait for MINE to fill the house with inanimate cats. That’s fine; the living ones will be older, too, and less likely to destroy the trinkets, I hope.
Thank you! Not going to lie, writing bad poetry is really fun