my life ain’ nothin’ desirable,

my frame is far from fit

for the Antique Road Show,

i liv’d my entire life submitting to being

haul’d around from rummage to rummage

on backs of rust’d flatbeds mostly known for

totin’ hay bales, wood chips, manure,

perhaps a coon dog or two,
guarding a dead deer;

now all i seem to be good for is

serving as a footstool for an old fax machine,

a place for old Ebony magazines

with cover shots of the King’s daughter

with baby Cole hazel-brown-eyes

she just lays there, hands fold’d

position’d prostrate, a recovering diva

silently singing Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa

how your father ador’d you.

her paperback stares up at me

all i us’d to be was an

old dormitory chair

put out for salvage,

once a starvin’ grad student snatch’d my butt

from a slow fading death

in the back of an old dank sh’d

where infatuat’d boy, the sons of visiting ministers

experiment’d with phallic fruits

against perspiring pubic regions

of the host preachers’ daughters

during autumn revival, living out the lesson

“be fruitful” but careful not to multiply

the seed of curiosity sans gospel,

and then they would dig their elbows in my

cushion moist with endocrine gender’d sap

prayer partners asking forgiveness

for wondering what was “down there,”

. . . (if feeling up was bad, why did God make it feel so good)?

then there was the time my wither’d wooden frame was pick’d up by the goodwill truck,

I was swabb’d down with disinfectant

by a poor guy on welfare with no political chance of ever getting an academic diploma,

then tagg’d for all i was worth

and then a college kid pull’d me out from beneath an old box of Wayne Newton dusties,

cashier gave me freedom papers for all i was worth, about a buck-fifty seven on

50 percent store wide sale day

. . . including sales tax. . .

my tour of duty then became

that of an uninsur’d footrest slash step stool slash sleeping quarters for a stray alley cat,

and sometimes a place for unread second-hand books assign’d by useless professors in useless
classes of an undergrad nature whose future is floating on a slow boat to some island where they speak broken English & being charg’d too much by slumlord slash ex-felon slash former Rhodes Scholar who couldn’t get a decent job,

. . . once he got off parole. . .   

O the weekend tails i could share

with Montel and Maury and Inside Edition,

the frustrat’d frontal action i’ve witness’d

if i had a swatch of cloth for every

college frosh who woo’d some woozy town girls

out of their discount store thongs,

not because they were in love but because

they just were looking to play out some

role as a nameless one night

flight of a drunken imagination,

forgetting that they will regret

what they did in the morning,

later on to be broadcast on some

laptop screen quicker than a quantum leap

just sniff the core of my foam,

and you’ll swear you smell Vegas,

. . .what happen’d here, stay’d here. . .

my seat has welcom’d intentions of the cleanest,

as well as the less than worthy

and just the same as most of my inhabitants,

we all got used to being used ‘cause

no one really cares,

so although my threadbare feelings may show,

like a broken worn out human soul,

who cares if i even give a rip?

at least i’m forever thankful

for not being set out to be burn’d

for the sins against humanity

that never were my fault in the first place,

but even in the midst of these untold stories,

those whom society forgot

still drag me out of the garbage,

they don’t mind seeking me out

once i’ve been toss’d out

with my cousin, the once living
holiday tree

© 2005, cynth’ya lewis reed

Alll rights reserv’d