Catharsis Poem by gershon hepner

Writing to show lives of cats are feline farces
provides creative writers far more than catharsis.
Recording daily feline actions in cat logs
can demonstrate that humans are the underdogs.
Every door that cats can open are like play dough
while they live out their nine-act live like feline Feydeaux.
Regardless or their pedigree and sex or size
they show life as a chaos we can’t exorcise.

Inspired by the final paragraph of Ben Brantley’s review of Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off” (“A Voyage to the Outer Limits of Hilarity, ” NYT, November 2,2001) , which Linda and I saw at The Noise Within on November 12,2009:
As a team, they go to pieces with balletic exactitude, acting out the professional and personal disintegration of a scrappy English troupe touring in a mediocre sex farce. For theatergoers in New York, the brave and beleaguered world capital of control freaks on the verge, this disciplined rendering of chaos starts to feel like an exorcism. There was a reason, you realize, that the meticulously frantic ''I Love Lucy'' was so beloved in the atomic age. Catharsis comes in surprising packages these days. Who would ever have thought three months ago that the most emotionally stirring shows in Manhattan would be a sincerely kitschy musical set to the songs of Abba (''Mamma Mia! '') , an earnest story-theater rendering of Greco-Roman myths (''Metamorphoses'') and a dizzy, well-known romp like ''Noises Off''? ...
The show's blazing standout, however, is a relative newcomer, Katie Finneran, who turns the role of Brooke Ashton, the director's bimbo girlfriend, into a triumph of eccentric slapstick. Business that should seem geriatric - like Brooke's repeatedly losing her contact lenses and bumping into walls - feels fresh every time it happens. Ms. Finneran, playing Brooke playing a usually undressed character named Vicki, also acts badly beautifully. Even her cleavage becomes comic. In an evening filled with peaks, the highest belongs to Brooke in the third act, when she sticks to every painfully studied gesture and line reading while her derailed fellow performers are improvising madly….Early in the evening, Ms. Finneran (playing Brooke playing Vicki) looks around the set of ''Nothing On'' and coos lasciviously, ''All these doors! '' A multitude of doors has always been an essential element of classic farce, a promise and a threat of the confusions ahead. ''Noises Off'' multiplies the Feydeauvian use of doors for complications and disorder. Every time one swings open, or fails to, this production ups the catastrophe quotient. And for whatever reasons, this artificial depiction of everything going wrong - of disaster lurking behind and leaping from every doorway - provides you with a tremendous feeling of release. This may not be what Aristotle meant by catharsis. But whatever you call it, it feels good.
Linda’s response was:
Sardines Are for Me

Sardines are for Me sayeth Tac.
And Humans shall prepare them as a sacrifice
appeasing Me on toast or on some crack-
ers to atone for vice.

Their vice is thinking they are gods,
commanding felines, making one more great mistake
they should be cured of - not by curse or rods -
for reprobation's sake.

Their plate is full and they should share
with Felines who protect their homes from crows or rats,
for I created them but mewling, bare,
well after worms or cats.

Awake ye Humans, ye are slaves
which I allow you to forget in my goodwill,
your independence make you felines’ knaves:
and yet I love you still.



11/13/09