PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

In the cool early summer evening of the urban canyon,

The echoes of the daily domestic dispute at number eight, are dwindling.

Shortly to be replaced by the routine sounds of enthusiastic lovemaking.

And once more the whole block groans along,  

While old Mrs Engels, singing, plays Nana Mouskouri for the seventeenth time.



Fritzi the cat shakes off the mists of sleep.

Aggravated and irritated he struts stiff-legged at the daily insult.

As the insolent and irreverent patch of sunlight, flees yet again,

From the empty tooth socket green pockets of the walled gardens.

In the daily pig-headed assault of the Eastern rampart.



Fritzi would follow the sun if he could,

But the ivy has long been cleared from those walls

And since the milky mewling dawn of time,

This is the only world he has known.

The world of the ten gardens.



Fritzi has an urgent appointment with a warm boiler.

But he first makes his regal tour of inspection,

The royal promenade along the great central divide of the back wall.

Out of reach of the snapping, yapping and snarling of rebellious minions,

For here Fritzi is king, by birthright, and owns all of the gardens.



By the Engels' garden of chaos he stops and twitches his tail in disapproval

Not at the tangle of Ivy, morning glory, and rotting, rusting furniture,

Even the twisting nightmare of the Japonicas and Japanese Knotweeds,

Growing through the ruins of old bicycles, leaves him cold.

Nor that someone has repaired the broken window of the cellar, his birthplace home of old.



For above on the balcony, the ever watchful one drinks coffee and watches.

This demon with the milk and the hissing, claw resisting, hateful basket,

Which opens to the bright white, piercing lights, of the soap and dog-smelling hell,

With the sharp sleepy needles and the ever mocking, world rocking shame of the flea collar, and the shameful, shaven and shocking emptiness, between his legs.



That royalty should ever be reduced to this,

Sleeping in the sun all day and eating fish from tins.

Fritzi's sire would turn in his curry if he knew!