You'll Be A Collyer Brothers Hermit!

 *Homer Lusk Collyer (November 1881–March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 1885–March 1947) were two United States brothers who became famous because of their reclusiveness, filth and compulsive hoarding. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby-traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

The brothers are often cited as a paradigmatic example of compulsive hoarding associated with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, as well as disposophobia, or Collyer Brothers Syndrome, a fear of throwing anything away. They died of malnutrition within a few days of each other, in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over one hundred tons of junk that they had amassed over several decades

Even then

my fingers were

stained with newspaper ink

gleaning information

for when I was

ready to speak.

And I thought-

the more news

I consumed

 I could fill

some unarticulated

gap

and prove

there was something

behind all that

fat.

The stacks accumulated

in my room-

a garish, headlined

womb.

And when my father

evoked the brothers

at the side

of my bed

I retreated

under many covers

to bandage my

riotous head.