Poems from Tomcat

The Tomcat ©1990

P.O. Box 750251

Petaluma, CA 94975

MARIANNE WARE
An introduction by Donna Champion

Marianne Ware is many things to many people: daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, teacher and friend. From these numerous and varied roles has emerged a unique and gifted writer. Marianne's writing draws on her New York Jewish roots, life in California and the intricate weavings of the family structure.

She explores the many facets of her characters, their thoughts, emotions and dreams. Marianne instills in her fiction and poetry a wonderful sense of humor, as well as a concern for the human condition. Her writer's voice is not distracted or diminished by trendy styles and subjects; the writing is clear and direct, while her vision encompasses the complexities and absurdities of our daily struggles.

Like her chicken soup, Marianne Ware's writing warms and enriches our lives and nourishes our weary souls. We are lucky to know her. She is a mench, a real person, a real writer.



WEATHERING

After a thunderous midnight argument,

a deluge of hailstone dreams,

a night of exposure on opposite ledges

across the king-sized chasm

of our bed,

we awake to a calm, clear morning,

rolling together easily

over a meadow of muslin daisies,

to find there are no gullies

or even fissures between us,

that we are scrubbed down now

and washed, wonderously clean.

Page 2 The Tomcat

NO ARMISTICE

Once again

you have invaded my village,

tromped through my secret garden,

confiscated my larder

and pummeled my sacred cow.

You have even raped me,

figuratively speaking,

terrorized me

with your bayonet posturings,

wounded me

with your knife-edged jibes.

I am dizzy

from trying to avoid

your land-mine arguments

occupied to the point of madness

with thoughts of

the Resistance forces

hidden in my basement below.

Yet, even as you slay me,

daughters,

I understand that you were

forcefully induced

(just like countless armies

of your brothers),

given brutal basic training

(childhood in our culture)

for this life, this world,

this maim-or-be-maimed

combat zone.

REASSESSMENT

My nose,

in middle age,

is so much bigger now.

It droops a whole lot

lower down than in my teens.

But finally it seems just right,

quite logically protuberant:

the ethnic hook my face was meant

to hang upon.

DOOMSDAY FANTASY OF A

MINIMUM WAGE SLAVE

In the camp kitchen, amidst pots

large enough to make dragon stew

for all the Knights of the Round Table;

staples ample enough to last

a passel of Dust Bowl kinfolk,

all the long 1930's way to California;

dishes numerous enough

for the family reunion

of the oldest, most prolific

couple in the U.S.A.,

I find myself sore-footed,

backachy, resentful-

stirring spaghetti sauce for 300-

imagining locusts

chomping up the grain belt;

cattle all over Texas, Wyoming, Montana

bloated and dying in every culvert;

all the tomato plants in America

stricken with blight,

and even the delicious summer grasses

(tossed with dandelion and miner's lettuce)

outside in the bowl-shaped meadow,

withered, suddenly,

inedibly parched,

then blackened to the ground.

I WANT A DELI IN IT

Some poets' landscapes

are too stark for me,

their vistas spare,

deprived in form and content,

so I get hungry at the breaks,

each time a bloodless phrase

is turned, and skinny similes

just ramble dryly on and on.

Too quickly I begin to crave

cream cheesy themes,

an ample bagel's verve,

pastrami, lox,

where there's no heft,

no meat, just desert sand,

a shade like Gulden's mustard

yet without its zip,

is smooth, cohesive texture.

I long for something solid, then:

good chewy chunks of speech

like Polish sausage, pumpernickel;

yet all I get are tasteless dunes,

bland Yucca spears,

a slice or more of cryptic sky.

Mojave pastorales are not for me;

their mesas beckon mainly to ascetics

who think of substance as a sin,

and that a worthy feast

is made of wind and grit

(no caraway) blown carelessly

across some bleached white

bones of words.

I

f there's no piquant pickle's bite,

no corny-beefy lines to love,

no beaming human being, there,

gesticulating at me

from behind the counter's glass,

then I repeat, reiterate:

a poem isn't much,

it's really desiccated,

without a deli in it.

The Tomcat Page 3

I SHOULD JOIN THE

OCEANIC SOCIETY

There is a walrus stranded in my bed;

slack.eyed, with belly up, he roan.

His tusks, glistening in the pre-dawn light,

seem less ferocious than you'd think,

although his snarls could wake the deaf,

barbinrrated, tsetse fly infected.

Awhile ago I read that whales

had beached themselves

along the southern California shore,

and certain people were concerned enough

to volunteer to push them back into the surf,

because they know: a whale out of its element

can crush itself to death with its own weight.

What can I do, these precious minutes, hours

as his moustache trembles and that clangor

issues only inches from my head? I've tried

to move away, to find a quiet place,

but he begins to squirm upon these gritty sheets

as if protesting my defection,

then flops his head about

and blares a trumpet off in all directions.

Could he have parasites - just like the whales -

affecting his poor brain and snout?

Or, does he thrash, a crazed, would-be seabound

somnambulant who dreams his mate and pups

are gone, his feeding grounds defiled,

his kindred maimed or dead.

In any case, this human lies here pinioned,

pensive, sleepless while that snoozing creature

e'roons his grating, mournful song.

I can't deprive him of his rest, appropriate

what Nature really meant for us to share.

There is a walrus stranded in my bed,

with on-shore rights atop these foamy dunes,

a claim upon these patchworked sands.

THE TRICK

When asked how it's done,

we, the artfully married,

hats full of ready homilies,

pull out predictable allusions

to ourselves as barnacles,

still clinging to a ship in drydock,

or a srubbom pair of apples

withering on a bare November tree.

More cunningly, we'll move

to conjure clowns

cavorting in an empty arena

after the circus leaves town

or old war hones galumphing

in the aftermath of the big parade.

Shrewdly, we will never show the hand

revealing us as cannibals,

stranded by a sudden winter,

Donner-passing the time,

our hunger and the storfixi away.

Then, by a not so clever slight of mind,

we could delude ourselves the most

if we forget to say

the whole routine is done with mirrors,

when either face shines back a likeness

of the other's private yearning.

And, in that fast shtffle of illusion,

as we respond to what we call

our partner's desperation,

thaCs how we work our special magic,

the hocus-pocus of this long-time coupling.

Some of these poems have previously appeared in First Leaves, Dremning of Wings, The Paper, Power and Work, and The Sonoma Mandala.