What the world tells me
I am an ordinary thing it seems,
told to me by the world every day,
in every moment in every way,
“An idea? No, go back to work…
I’m sorry I didn’t see you there…
a promotion, it’s only been 3 years…
the line starts at the back…
what’s your name again, Doll, Dahl?”
— — — — — — — ֎ — — — — — — — — — -
Maybe I have joined the noble ranks
of the ordinary paperclip. I’m boxed.
In a room, in a building, in a town,
in a state and a large country.
Boxed in boxes of larger boxes.
It’s a good comparison, I say,
I and the useful paperclip.,
for, if it could, I think it would,
aspire to more than holding papers,
unfolding to pick a lock, or poke a hole.
I love myself, and I can poke a hole
and once I had to pick a lock
(with a cleverly unfolded paperclip).
Or maybe I’m like a toothbrush,
useful for cleaning teeth, or
when I’m old, scrubbing grout.
Hygenic I am, I can say proudly,
and I’ve scrubbed some grout before,
cleaned some teeth and bathrooms.
— — — — — — — ֎ — — —— — — — — -
We ordinary things, I suppose can aspire
to greater roles than are assigned us.
Here I write an ode to me in ordinariness,
not writing in the way that follows, though,
for remember I am told I am ordinary…
“O ordinary thing, thou breath of indifference,
Thou, from whose unnoticed nature
springs the simplest utilities oft forgot,
in the disposableness of thy very self.
No chariots guide thee to thy throne
of popsicle sticks and aluminum foil.”
— — —— — — — ֎ — — — — — — —— -
Nay, um, no, like a useful paperclip
my attempts to unbend myself
in poetry, are not capable of the flowery,
and lead to naught but questions.
“Oh… but what do you really do?”
And when not even read by poets,
it seems staying curled up
in the paperclip’s fetal position
may just be the way to go.
I think it’s OK to like myself, though,
to like the heresy of my poesy,
the oblivion of my prolific prose.
And I get to work with another,
an older, slightly rusty paperclip.
— — — — — — — ֎ — — — —— — — — — -
I wouldn’t compare myself to a shoe,
or an alarm clock, or a garbage can,
so perhaps we ordinary things
are a little full of ourselves after all.
I join the ranks of the paperclips
proud that I am not smelly or loud,
though I am kind-hearted enough
to recognize our cousins in the ordinary
for the ordinary that they do well.
And perhaps they look askance at us,
“paperclips? how does that protect feet,
or wake people up for a day of work,
or remove the waste from your home?”
“Pshaw, they say,” and I’ve heard them, true,
for the ordinary use such words.
— — — — — — — ֎ — — — — — — — — — -
I love me in my extraordinary ordinariness.
invisibly present, speaking futilely into silence,
creating things that nobody really sees.
I’m shiny enough I think, and well groomed,
and, when noticed, I rarely cause offense.
I hold my stack of papers for awhile
but then I get a paperclip to do this,
for that’s what friends are for.
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Originally published at https://vocal.media.
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