Someone's Gotta Do It

Carrying on my tradition of threshing word from flesh –
that is to say, destroying any object with which
I have any contact – I hereby shall attest I just
dispatched two shredded scraps of bedding to
the street – cotton quilt and plushy throw – which had
evolved so far from their original sweet glow and fresh
beyond-the-bed-and-bath condition of a yuppie-
cutedom into such unmitigated squalor that

one might have thought to call Forensics in to figure
out the nature of whatever gory crime I clearly
had committed – then to collar me and put me
somewhere far from fabric. Ah, but they would nab
me quicker for what I appear to do to coffee-makers,
slatted wooden chairs and Oriental rugs: which
similarly can’t escape the brutal hug of gruesome Fate
as my (presumably) insentient guests: not to mention

my four-poster bed now propped up to provide at least
some serviceable rest with stacks of two-by-fours –
the whole recovering from various shenanigans
about which I shall not say more. Maybe I’m a horde
of locusts: or maybe I just vibrate at a greater pitch
than calmer folk who do not seem to wreck a chair
or bed or blanket or electrical appliance just by sitting,
breathing, being there. But how much do we know

what’s what in that or this or anything? Thought
is nearly half reflex and half instinct with just a soupçon
of reflection: the Universe is mostly made of stuff
we cannot even name. Maybe I am not to blame:
maybe there’s a force at work which gets the whole
regalia by the neck and swings it violently back and forth
until it splatters. Maybe I’ve got more of it in me than
you do. Maybe I’m just freeing energy from matter.


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