If I’d had a thousand soiled doilies
on my front stoop at any time
during the tirade of lost galoshes,
I could have cashed in, gotten me
an early retirement.
But what did I do instead?
I picked soiled tea cozies.
Now I’m broke, and those
lost galoshes ain’t
never coming back. Jack.
There might be too much grousing
to go around this cabin, people.
I can’t even hear myself think
long enough to get a good schvitz.
If you’re gonna spew hot air,
go do it where you’ll make a difference.
The wheel has been lost
[let me repeat]
the WHEEL has been LOST.
Does anybody remember
where it was seen last?
Who forgot
to put it on its side?
It can’t run away
if we paralyze it–
I remember when stone
just sat there, inert.
It didn’t have an agenda,
didn’t have important places to go.
All of a sudden we’ve got rocks
on the run!
Our women and children
won’t be spared.
Give me some pork with cheese on the side
just for the sake of sacrilege.
I don’t want any griping or bitching,
did you read scripture this morning?
It’s high time that concerned folks like you
be scrutinized for their glossy ideals
of rainbow-filled skies and lollipop clouds
thrown up just to please your delusions.
Great, you give a rat’s ass about my diet.
Move on, live your goddamn life.
I just
wanna furnish
the whole world
with chifforobes
and butternut squash nuggets,
ya dig?
Otherwise, potato scraps
and maple-nut porridge
will have to do
until we get our hands
on porcelain fixtures
of all kinds.
Heaven sent this message for a reason!
We can’t stare at it with blind eyes
while the rest of the world sleeps.
What kind of people would we be
if we just let a pair of kitchen shears
go by the wayside?!
We need to give them a proper home
before they end up as scrap metal, or
worse, a pair of average scissors.
Substance abuse caters to the infinitely patient and unlikely tortoise shell comb, unbreakable and unwilling to change its sorry status as a tool of man–it’ll live out its days as an unrepentant drone, content to wallow in the vanity drawer with the brushes and lotions of the world.
WHARVED 