King Of California

Dave Alvin
and the Guilty Women

King of California

Philadelphia, Pa.
7/10/09

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Poncho is the King of Catnip
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he came to the door one night
wet thin beaten and terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,
"not much chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk,
look at these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here,
the pellets are still there...also, he once had a tail,
somebody cut it off..."
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer,
one of the hottest in decades,
I put him on the bathroom floor, gave him water and pills,
he wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t touch the water,
I dipped my finger into it and wet his mouth
and I talked to him, I didn’t go anywhere,
I put in a lot of bathroom time
and talked to him and gently touched him and
he looked back at me with those pale blue crossed eyes
and as the days went by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn’t work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city,
I related to that cat---I’d had it bad,
not that bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
“you can make it,” I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk,
the rear legs just didn’t want to do it
and he fell again, rested, then got up.
you know the rest: now he’s better than ever,
cross-eyed, almost toothless, but the grace is back,
and that look in his eyes never left…
and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,
"look, look at this!”
but they don’t understand, they say something like,
"you say you’ve been influenced by Celine?"
“no,” I hold the cat up, "by what happens,
by things like this, by this, by this!”
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed, he knows…
it’s then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are
photographed together.
he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.
--Charles Bukowski
(The History of One Tough Motherfucker)