A long one, from Moment to Moment:
INNER WORKINGS
I have seen you when your smiles and frowns were so tied up and intermingled that none -- not even you could have said with any sureness what face you were giving to the crowd. I have walked with you to subways when parting was difficult and less than twnety minutes later been with someone else and loved you none the less. I have spied on you and looked accusigly, when I, myself, knew well that I was in the wrong. I have wept for you, about you and one time with you. I have shared your secrets and kept private secrets of my own. I have fought with you and over you, loved you and disliked you in equal parts and at the same time. I have thought that I would die if you failed to turn up on some pre-selected night and when you didn't -- wished I would. I have loved you never asking if I should. I have trusted you not caring if I could or couldn't. In company with strangers or your friends I have smiled and gone on smiling when I thought no single smile or grin was yet left inside me. If we were unhappy with one the other why shouldn't it be just our concern? I have watched you play with other people's children and felt they were our own. I've heard you hum some made-up tune at breakfast and watched you killing time all day while you awaited killing me at night. I have lied to you for no good reason. I have troubled you and even when I knew it sometimes that didn't make me stop. The things we do in love's name never stop amazing me. I'm amazed that love can live at all through all the subterfuge, pass through all the barricades, stumble over all the obstacles we constuct and put up in its way. That first seed wherever planted must have been a hearty strain. Just now what kind of passion stirs inside me I can't say. I feel for you and it's as much as love but whether it's because I feel you leaving, slipping from me day by day or because I need, depend on, want just you I have no way of knowing. Our lives together have become so knotted, muddled up that who's to say where the heart ended and habit started in to open up? I love you -- yes But I don't mean for you to know it.
1 | For a while the only earth that Sloopy knew was in her sandbox. Two rooms on Fifty-fifth Street were her domain. Every night she'd sit in the window among the avocado plants waiting for me to come home (my arms full of canned liver and love). We'd talk into the night then contented but missing something, She the earth she never knew me the hills I ran while growing bent. Sloopy should have been a cowboy's cat with prairies to run not linoleum and real-live catnip mice. No one to depend on but herself. I never told her but in my mind I was a midnight cowboy even then. Riding my imaginary horse down Forty-second Street, going off with strangers to live an hour-long cowboy's life, but always coming home to Sloopy, who loved me best. 2 | A dozen summers we lived against the world. An island on an island. She'd comfort me with purring I'd fatten her with smiles. We grew rich on trust needing not the beach or butterflies I had a friend named Ben Who painted buildings like Roualt men. He went away. My laughter tired Lillian after a time she found a man who only smiled. Only Sloopy stay and stayed. Winter. Nineteen fifty-nine. Old men walk their dogs. Some are walked so often that their feel leave little pink tracks in the soft gray snow. Women fur on fur elegant and easy only slightly pure hailing cabs to take them round the block and back. Who is not a love seeker when December comes? even children pray to Santa Claus. I had my own love safe at home and yet I stayed out all one night the next day too. 3 | They must have thought me crazy screaming Sloopy Sloopy as the snow came falling down around me. I was a madman to have stayed away one minute more than the appointed hour. I'd like to think a golden cowboy snatched her from the window sill, and safely saddlebagged she rode to Arizona. She's stalking lizards in the cactus now perhaps bitter but free. I'm bitter too and not a free man any more. Once was a time, in New York's jungle in a tree, before I went into the world in search of other kinds of love nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy. Looking back perhaps she's been the only human thing that ever gave back love to me.
thirty-seven You may puzzle at me when I tell you that your not loving me is the most love that I ever had. But anyone who's given in to loving will know and understand. ----from Caught in the Quiet © 1970 by Rod McKuen What Is It? Cloud formations on a given day and wondering if you've seen them too are enough to make a morning pass for me. Was your day filled with wanting, or the needlepoint of knowing that I waited and that I wait for you? I did. I do. Swing safely home to me, come eveing. Make room for me within your life and I'll make room for you within my arms. If you don't know algebra or Alice by the the fire, or even why some roses fail to climb the wall, ask the question of me. Never be afraid to say, What is it? ----From "Fields of Wonder" © 1970, 1971 by Rod McKuen Atlas Don't be afraid to fall asleep with gypsies or run with leopards. As travelers or highwaymen we should employ whatever kind of wheels it takes to make our lives go smoothly down the road. And if you love somebody tell them. Love's a better roadmap for trucking down the years than Rand McNally ever made. Did You Know The air was bearable to me only just because I had to breathe but then you must have known that. I don't think I could have stood the green of green trees too much longer on my own -- even though I had no way of knowing what I'd missed by not sharing until you stood my bail by being here. ---- from With Love © 1968, 1969, 1970 by Rod McKuen
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A Cat Named Sloopy is from the book "Listen To The Warm" published by Random House. Copyright Rod McKuen (various dates listed in the book). So let's say sometime between 1963 and 1967.
This page is in no way connected or authorized by Rod McKuen or any company he is affiliated with. It is the creation of myself, and I will ALWAYS give proper credit to anything used here.
This page concept created on Saturday, April 17, 1997 Last updated on Monday, March 06, 2000
