Thursday, September 11, 2014

poem of the day 09.11.14


stuff

she was insistent
that i drive out to her house to get my stuff

i don’t want your stuff hanging
around here anymore

it had been less than a week since we’d ended

i’m sick of looking at
all of your stuff, she told me on the phone

i went out to her house on a saturday night
a week before we had been going to the movies
or going out for bad mexican food
having bad sex in her bedroom

now we were face to face in her dining room
with all of my stuff scattered on the table
and two black garbage bags
like deflated balloons hung over a chair

i want you to take your stuff and go, she said
but then she started crying when i began packing everything

i hate you, she said
she ran upstairs to play more
sad break-up music on her stereo

it was supposed to be symbolic
the music boomed throughout her house
i just kept thinking of the poor neighbors
who had to put up with our shit

while she was gone
i got most of my stuff into one black garbage bag
old denim shorts, hoodies
books i’d let her borrow that she’d never read

she had two of my poetry manuscripts
and i was glad to have them back

the poetry inside was bad but at least it was mine

she’d ripped out both dedications
and had them crumpled into a ball
with more of my stuff

i tried to leave before she came back down
but i wasn’t fast enough

what’s this? she said, pointing back into the dining room
there’s still stuff on the table

true….but it was stuff that i had given her as gifts
stuffed animals, a framed photo, perfume, a tin ring
a journal because she wanted to be a poet too

she had the christmas ornament that i’d given her
on the table too

that’s not my stuff, i said

well, i don’t want them, she said
she tore into the dining room like a maniac
and started putting all of that stuff into the other garbage bag
including the crumpled dedications

all of your poems are lies, she said

the music was booming in her home so loudly
that i couldn’t think

i couldn’t wait to get out of there
i needed a cigarette and a vodka

some friends and i, we were going to a bar later
to meet a few girls and talk about some stuff

here, she said
she tossed the other garbage bag at me

it landed at my feet with some stuffed animal
looking me right in the eye

so i grabbed the other bag and hit the road
while she wailed and her shitty, loud music played

i crossed her street for the last time

i looked like some sad sack santa claus
with two huge bags of stuff slung over my back

then i sat in my car
i smoked a cigarette
and read some of my bad poems

i watched her watching me
from her dining room

you could hear the music blasting from outside

then she shut the light off
and i crushed my smoke

i threw the poetry manuscripts in the back seat
and drove off with no music playing

thinking it was hard to be the sensitive artist type

and wondering where in the hell
i could find a garbage can big enough
to hold all of this stuff.

                                    

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