From: Plonq Subject: Stormy Weather (a bit of a change) Date: Wednesday, April 29, 1998 10:44 PM I may already have posted this little poem in this newsgroup -- I hid a poem away in my delurk/furvey, but I'm not sure if it was this one (and I'm too lazy to check ;) In that case, consider this a "tentative repost of a poem" but with a vignette built around it like a tacky frame. A slight departure from my usual writing, but I think we both of us Plonqs appreciate the break... 8<--- cut and discard beyond this point --- Gray sidewalks mirrored gray skies and a wind-driven rain beat the window in a staccato tattoo. It was the sort of wet, blustery afternoon that made the cat in ones lap seem a bit warmer, and drew a little extra comfort out of the hot chocolate in ones hand. Somewhere in another apartment, the little snow leopard could hear a female morph singing. He could not identify the species, but her voice carried through the thin walls with an ethereal beauty as she sung, "Don't know why there's no sun in the sky..." It took Plonq a few moments to place the song, but he finally pegged it as an old number called "Stormy Weather." Who had sung that one originally? Not Ella Fitzgerbil... or was it? Then again, he could not seem to shake the name "Ethel Otters" from the back of his mind. The cat admitted to himself that he knew very little about jazz. A strong gust rattled the windows in their casements, making Plonq abandon the idea he had been nurturing about running to the coffeehouse across the street. This was not the kind of weather into which a fur with a thick, water-absorbing pelt ventured by choice. He pulled another sip of hot chocolate and absently scratched the ears of the cat sleeping in his lap. Her only reaction was to sigh and nuzzle her nose deeper into his fur. Apparently the mood was contagious. The cat morph turned his attention away from the dismal scene outside the window and stared at the monitor, which glowed invitingly a few inches from his nose. The blinking cursor on the white backdrop of his word processor seemed to say, "I'm an inspiration waiting to happen." Plonq reached out and gently plucked a few stray hairs out of the keyboard. He held them away from the desk and sent them drifting away on a puff of breath. "Have you been walking on my keyboard?" he asked the sleeping cat accusingly. "That's your colour of fur, not mine." She did not deign to answer. Plonq shrugged and removed his glasses. He could see well enough this close to the screen, and they just kept sliding down his nose anyway. He squinted at the monitor and spotted a couple of tiny nose prints. "Ack! I can't have you walking all over my keyboard and getting cat snot on my screen," he chastised. "That's my canvass. Words are my paint. How do you think a REAL artist would feel if his cat kept walking all over his art?" This time the cat responded by looking up at the snow leopard, blinking tiredly and saying, "Mrowr?" "Never mind," said Plonq, scratching her ears until she was rumbling like a moped with a loose muffler. As he struggled for inspiration, the words of his late mentor came to him: "When inspiration fails you bad Then write a poem you silly lad" "Hrm," he mewled. First he would require some music to set the mood. Rather than make a conscious choice, he averted his gaze and pointed to a random disk in the miniature CD rack he kept beside his computer. He looked back and discovered that he had chosen Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony No. 3". "Delightfully bleak music for such a dreary day," he said with pleasure, "what a fortuitous choice!" The morph put the disc in his computer's CD bay and shut his eyes while he listened to the slow swell of the music. He let his grand tail sweep in a slow pendulum with the rhythm of the music, and almost before he knew it he had an idea for a poem. Slowly at first, but gaining speed and momentum, the words began to flow from his fingers. "The Paws of Night (A Poem by Plonq) The paws of darkness softly creep across the land, and signal sleep to creatures of the waning day who, mortal wounded, pours away his ruddy, tattered shards of light before the silken huntress night. Her subtle spoor, a heady musk, instils the wind with scents of dusk, and tells the world that she again holds all in her nocturnal reign, 'til phoenix-like the day reborn arises in the blaze of morn, his mane afire, and from its heat the queen of twilight must retreat to convalesce, and lick the burn and plot the time of her return." The snow leopard sat back and reread his work with a critical eye. Not his best poem, but good enough for him to sign his name to it. * Plonq (\ ,,, /) o O @ ==( . )== U