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Famous Reporter # 8
November, 1993
 
                               Ba Phillipps
 
WRITING ON A CAT
 
                                            This poem is written on a cat back
                                            on scrap.
                                            My writing's bad but legible
                                            and the cat, an incredible
                                            long-legged ginger with a grassy green eye,
                                            lies half-swooned on my lap, an occasional soft sigh
                                            escaping through Dracula incisors,
                                            the smile self-satisfied and a little wild.
                                            He enjoys poetry, is himself a self-styled
                                            singer, a cat bard, a bringer
                                            of auditory joy. This boy purrs -
                                            he knows I try hard with my verse
                                            so he allows me to lean on him -
                                            and I could do worse
                                            than write poems on the living back
                                            of a melted- butter and jam cat, my muse.
                                            I mean, it's very cosy in winter, and saves fuel,
                                            which is helpful for the household purse.
                                            A cat always understands these things by intuition
                                            and then brings them to a satisfactory fruition;
                                            a poem in my case
                                            via ailurophilic fission.

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