Histoire
The usual thing:
Time stood still for years, then fell off the table.
This is a portrait of what I was, and wasn’t.
Parched throat, tears exploding.
I stumbled over every cat on the stairs.
Who else could I be?
Twenty-six letters equaled
not enough words.
There was sleep. And simple memory.
I sewed Simplicity patterns and wished for beauty.
But what is perfume that no one opens?
When I lifted my violin, the men at the bar
begged for Skynyrd, not Coltrane.
So I volunteered to be lonely.
* * * * *
Idyl
What we have is a leaky shower,
and Tom is lying in it, caulking the drain.
It takes guts to be handy —
guts, and a tolerance for misery.
Meanwhile, I sweep crumbs and boil spaghetti
and wash spinach and picture my high school
report card droning its dot-matrix platitude:
“ :: has :: flare :: for :: the :: subject :: ”
He does.
But if I had a bathtub instead of a leaky shower,
there’d be no need for flare. The wet book in my hands
would be Villette or maybe Faust,
and all of the water would go straight down the drain,
just like in the movies.
O, for a lightbulb, for hot and cold water and oil in the tank.
We live in a time of miracles,
when the food doesn’t rot, unless we ask it to.
Dear handyman, so carefully not letting the cat lick caulk,
I empty this sloshing pail in your honor.