Within our homes, what really matters,
Barring the décor,
Is how we feel, despite some tatters
Or an aging floor.
For if we’ve made a cozy haven
Where we can unwind,
The stress or tension we’ve been savin’
Can be left behind.
Each hand-picked tchotchke, rug or table,
Photograph or lamp
Creates a space where we are able
To imprint our stamp.
Our rooms reflect what makes us smile,
Chosen for ourselves.
If others do not like our style
Or what sits on our shelves,
It doesn’t matter even slightly.
We just do our best
To please the ones who, day and nightly,
Share our little nest.
Spring cleaning comes and I seek to expunge from every counter and corner
All clutter and dried rose that serves no purpose
Knickknacks and little trinkets all go in the basket.
To be given to those who have lesser or resold or simple lost forever
There it sits on the mantle, an object grotesquely elephantine
Rounded edges so it fits into no corners
Claiming center stage, grossly out of place
Into the basket it goes leaving only a rim of dust in its absence
Spring cleaning is over, expunged from every counter and corner-
-all clutter or dried rose that serves no purpose
Knickknacks and little trinkets all go in the basket
The basket goes to the salvation army down the street
I sit and relax after a long day
Coffee in my hand, eyes fixed on the clean mantle
There it sits on the mantle, the object grotesquely elephantine
rounded edges so it fits in no corners
Claiming its place in the center
Of no value but it still remains
Like the one who gave it
My tchotchke
Early morning thud...
the bedroom door opens wide...
ginger cat scampers
frightened by the sudden sound
of an overturned tchotchke
I dated a designer named miss Quiche
And walked her chow at the end of its leash
But she got irate
On our second date
When my tchotchke got too close to her niche
Although in a week she asked for me back
And let me polish her two bric-a-brac
Then below that ledge
I struggled to wedge
My doo-hickey inside her knick-knack
Yet she had the nerve to mock my trinket
Which that, of course, effected to shrink it
But I seized from the rear
A select souvenir
Hoping in the end she would rethink it
My abecedarian fingers
Numb to their recalculations and lexicons
I brush slimly my thumb through each
And clasp myself in fives or nines
It sinks its full weight like an equivocate clasp
One gaucherie to an eldritch comeuppance
A padlock lip nimble and pivoted like sickness
Delicate but ultimately dependent upon timing
The human stomach is a pendulum
I feel mine pulse as cynosure cascaded
I cherish extemporaneous occurances
Empyrean palisades and medications
I collect as a dictator my tintinnabulations
Of etiolated tchotchke and clamp my fistful
Stumpside in the rivulet, Adamic clay bathes
Of my clasping reconnaissance of fives and nines.
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