Qualms

When a black cat passed under my window today,
I looked up at the moon and I started to bay.
(It was a western moon in the phase we call wane
  and I bayed to keep myself from going insane.)

For a black cat is bad luck as all of us know,
and a bay at the moon seemed to be apropos.
Because all of a sudden my luck made a frown
when the dishwater in the sink would not go down.

So I reached for a plunger I kept close at hand
and I felt like bad luck had just struck up the band.
As I plunged and I plunged without sign of clog-give,
I thought, How nice misfortune hit me where I live.

  (All because a black cat walked beneath window pane;
    and with car windows down we will no doubt get rain!
    O the curse of a feline who stalks with an air,
      then delivers the voodoo devoid of all care.)

Get a-hold of things now, so I said to myself
as I wiped off some water that splashed on the shelf.
Shall I let this uneasy force fear to stand pat
due to nondescript wanderings of a black cat?

And the water just mocked me in stainless steel pool
just because a black cat had played me for a fool.
(The two halves of my brain were engaged in a war
  like the Blue and the Gray in American lore.)

Thus I felt so confined to my nutshell of space,
for to fear a black cat was indeed a disgrace.
Ah but no, fate had picked me to feel the cold lance
of adversity due to a black cat advance!

It was true that a plumber then had to come snake
the black cat induced kitchen sink plumbing mistake.
When he did it was also true fate pained some more
as he slipped and fell backwards on the kitchen floor.

Woe is me, dang the pang that had hold of my heart;
the new day was accursed* from the very start.
In my chilled apprehension of bad luck bring-on,
I was fodder for fortune that opted at dawn.

Come, come, come spoke the part of the rational me;
be aware superstition is a fallacy.
I dismissed it as falderal and chimney soot
holding my lucky clover and old rabbit’s foot.


40 Lines (Anapestic Tetrameter)
Writer’s Cramp
October 20, 2013

*accursed...ə-ˈkər-səd