20150529 (storage)

Yesterday I thought to face the beast

That accumulation of my venial sins

The garage, the house, my life

The amalgam of tasks half-done

Dishes in the sink unwashed and waiting

In this case the garage one of the

Most generous autohomes I’ve ever owned

Space for one smaller car 

Because of all the shelving built up front

A mezzanine of dubious strength

A dumping ground of chosen

And inadvertent acquisitions. Home to

Some neighborhood puma who scoots in

Through the space where someone attempted

But failed to build a proper sill 

For the steel pedestrian door

It is she (he?) who in moments

Of undisturbed freedom probably bounds

Off the walls, the shelves, the boxes and rips

Stacked styrofoam to shards, topples bottles

Of old goo onto the tool bench and hides

His (her) mammoth turds behind the rolls

Of tarpaper, the fallen stacks of two by fours,

Which I discover while I tear from the piles

Mosquito lairs of sodden cardboard 

Boxes once stored neatly 

Folded upright, dry and off the floor

So that they today might hold

All manners of crap for dispatch 

Even themselves. Alas, they fall apart

‘Midst scurries of millipedes

I stand accused. My car parked 

Beyond the folding steel grate

Yes, some evil one might steal

The broken toy baby buggy or the cans

Of  dislabeled garden chemicals, the two 

Large rusting buckets of roofing tar

By sundown I had freed enough room 

For half the car and thought as I

Returned to the house, what other

Disaster festered while I lavished 

Love on the garage


c. J.S.Manista, 2015