2 posts tagged “cleaning”
Hedged Bets
Lift your covers up woman
Rise out of bed.
Sneak down the dark hall
Mind the floorboards that creak.
Slip to night out your back-door
Take a small light to see
Find our place in the bushes
Where we used to meet
It's been some time since there was a once in my while,
it's been a long line since there was happy in the smile.
Ain't nothing so cool as a hot summer rain
It soaks and it soothes and it puddles the pain
Your miles stretched out ahead of my years
Forget about your day now
The titles that you wear
You were none of those to me there
They all unzipped and fell
Remember what you became then
With leaves in your hair
Listen to what the night brings
The past in your head
It's been some time since there was a once in my while,
it's been a long line since there was happy in the smile.
Ain't nothing so cool as a hot summer rain
It soaks and it soothes and it puddles the pain
Your miles stretched out ahead of my years
Ain't nobody meeting you tonight
Not like I did
You can see into your house
through a closed window and to a warm bed
This is what you have now
And this shrub's just a hedge
No rendezvous for wary lovers this night
But for the yowl of a lonely tomcat
It's been some time since there was a once in my while,
it's been a long line since there was happy in the smile.
Ain't nothing so cool as a hot summer rain
It soaks and it soothes and it puddles the pain
Your miles stretched out ahead of my years
This weekend the wife and I attempted the organization and thinning out of the myriad of boxes that have followed us around for four moves and two states now. Little was accomplished. The clutter remains the same.
I know what I should do.
I should call the number on the flyer for our local refuse company to drop-off a driveway dumpster, one of the big 30 cubic yard containers, so that I can spend a week filling it up with things I haven't touched or un-boxed in years and then have them collect it and remove it from my life. I know this would be liberating, I know it would be a step forward, I know that it would ease the nagging in the back of my head that I'm being an inadequate, to the point of being juvenile, adult.
I'm staring at the flyer right now.
I've pinned it to the corkboard on the wall next to the PC.
I know that I'm not going to make that call today.
Maybe not even tomorrow.
I don't know why.
While we were moving the boxes around, rearranging, but not really condemning any of the items to the waste bin, something happened. Out of a box, a tarnished ensemble of lacquered wood and bronze plating fell, clattering to the garage floor.
It came to rest in several pieces.
I hadn't thought about that trophy for more than a decade.
It had meant something at the time, even though I was busy trying to play it off with false modesty and a little bravado.
It was essentially a popularity award, voted on once per year by the students and staff of a college radio station where I had done some time. At the end of every year the winner was presented at an awards ceremony to honor the best and worst that had befallen the station and students the year prior.
Now it was garbage.
Though, in truth, it had been broken for me a long time ago.
Every thing of note that I accomplished at that station, I had done with a partner.
But when the voting came around, there was only room for one vote per ballot.
We conspired, my friend and I, to not split the votes that our tag-team show would garner.
We flipped a coin, or roshambo'd, or something to decide who would campaign to win the first year, then it was agreed that the other one of us would win the next year.
I won, both the coin-flip, and the award the first year. My picture is still up on the wall holding the trophy along with all the previous winners, and likely will be until they run out of hallway space.
However, the next year, when voting came around, my very deserving equal partner was snubbed.
I didn't understand it, and neither did he.
Considering our own polling of the people we partied with at the station assured a numerical certainty that he would have won that year even if every single person we didn't talk to voted for somebody else.
That year the winner was somebody he had trained. Somebody who'd put in less time than he.
Somebody, who had told us that she was voting for him... and didn't.
Treachery. Betrayal. People we liked and worked with had lied to us. I had ridden our combined efforts to a singular trophy, and my friend had been passed by.
My friend and I didn't talk about the trophy much after that.
That year I took the trophy plaque off my wall and placed it into a box where it had stayed all this time.
We left the station the summer after that award ceremony and transfered schools to earn our B.A. degrees.
My wife didn't understand why I was smiling when I got the broom and dustpan or why all this time later, it felt so good to finally sweep up the pieces.
Artist:
Geggy Tah
Song:
Lotta Stuff
Album:
Sacred Cow
There's a lotta stuff in my gut that I can't seem to get rid of
I wish the whole universe would absorb cause it's so much bigger
Unless I take the time
All this stuff will be mine for the rest of my stuffed life
All mine, All mine
All mine, All mine
There's a lotta stuff in my room that I can't seem to put away
I wish the flowers of woe, stop, it' s not cool to look pretty
Unless I take the time
All this stuff will be mine for the rest of my stuffed life
All mine, All mine
All mine, All mine
All mine, All mine
All mine, All mine
All mine, All mine
All mine, All mine. . .
There's a lotta stuff in my gut that I can' t seem to get rid of
I wish the whole universe would absorb cause it's so much bigger
Unless I take the time
All this stuff will be mine for the rest of my stuffed life
Taxi, taxidermy
Taxi, taxidermy me
Taxi, taxidermy me
Taxi, taxidermy me
