The Closet

Everything I want to own is in my car right now:
three plastic bins, a guitar and a backpack.
I'm a long ways from being a nomad
riding the rails, following the great herds
but I'm a gas station and a reason away from anywhere.

One bin is pants and jackets.
One bin is shirts.
One bin is books, dvd's and pictures.
I keep miscellaneous Best Buy suburban necessities in my backpack.

I'm happy with the little inconvenience
of making room for a passenger or two,
though there may be a few small digs
about the clutter.

My car is a closet,
for right now
I live in it.

Special

A friend told me to check out a pizza place on railroad
told me it was great, that it would be my new favorite place in town.
I tried it and it was pizza.

It was good
but it was just pizza,
there was nothing special about it.

Like when I went to the Grand Canyon
drove out there with a buddy in the middle of the night
drove 6 hours out of our way, because it was the grand canyon,
we sat in my Camry and watched the sun come up.
It came up slow and we saw more and more of the canyon,
it was big.

I read Ovid's Metamorphoses.
I didn't get what the big deal was.
Maybe I'm not cultured enough.
Maybe I need to read more things
to be able to read Ovid
and actually like it.

People say that's what I need to do,
but I think those people are in love with being smart.
They want to have opinions on Ovid, Plato and Tolstoy.
I don't.
I wish I hadn't read Ovid,
it was crap.

Most things that are supposed to be special
aren't.
The people who say they are
just want to be special themselves,
but they aren't.

Now when I went to see Crater Lake
that was special.

Couches

Couches in front yards
mean that the lease is up
in a college town
they migrate there every fall.

For a week
their owners advertise their comfort:
drinking cheap beer and smoking cigarettes
while lounging in their old davenport.

Some are snatched up quick,
depending on the corner they're on and their condition
some could be on the lawn an hour or less
but some aren't so fortunate.

This is for the unlucky
stuck out in the rain
mildew growing in their pull-out mattress,

for the ugly and torn
on inaccessible back alleys
drooping with fall rain,

for the last one taken to the dump
collecting dead leaves
into the depths of October,

for those cushions
that will never smell right again
never have another out of town friend crash on them.

Those who are gone,
buried in landfills
or lost under a mountain of clutter
next to old cans of paint
in the back of poorly lit basements.

For years
they soaked up the PBR
wore the spilled marinara sauce with pride
hid pens, bottle openers and change so well
we forgot they even existed.

Let us not make that same mistake
with these noble embracers of ass,
for while we may have abandoned them
in favor of our Aunts reclining love seat,
nothing could replace the love they showed us
on those late nights
watching Warner TimeLife's Golden Oldies informercials.