MY FRONT PORCH

by Phil Hart 

Two old wooden school chairs someone tossed in the dumpster

One old stuffed recliner from a friend taken apart piled in a corner

An old stuffed rocking chair I inherited from a dead friend

A torn bag of peat moss that my brother brought me by mistake

Some old plastic pots flowers came in for the little flower garden

Long strips of molding from some project that no one ever started

A few long thin boards from another project no one remembers

One strip of chrome off a Mercury Grand Marquis right rear

One canvas director's style chair with rotten canvas ripping

Buckets of sand salt ice melt more sand more calcium chloride

One big scoop silver snow shovel on a short handle

One small hole scoop gardening shovel on a long handle

One usable rocking uncomfortable chair

One grecian style two foot high pedestal for mail packages

One split from freezing long garden hose

I forget. There was more.

The trash guy came and hauled it all away.

All of it. I think. I haven't had the courage to look.

But I heard. He must have done something.

I mean, look, I bought the snow shovel. 

The edge is all curled metal from chopping ice.

Twenty three fucking years of ice.

Everything else came to me.

The chairs the hose the buckets for winter

Even the car was picked for me by a friend.

I was attached to the junk like I'm fuckin' attached

To people and their kindness or love or whatever

You call it cuz face it there's not that much of it

Around anymore and yeah I do think there was

More or less of it before depending on my mood.

But so what?

We get attached to symbols of love. 

And it's in the Cross of Christ I Glory fine for

Sundays but gotta clean up that fuckin' porch

Real soon or the neighbors are gonna think it's

Poverty row inside and out and inside it okay

Just don't show it off for fuck's sake.

One of those chairs has some cum stains on it.

Mine. So right now, right fuckin' now

My cum, my once potential progeny is headed

For the fucking dump. 

Ohhhh all my sons that could have been.

Ahhhh the agony of seeing them disappear.

I can barely stand the thought of not being

Able to spank their little heinies 

To slap their little faces and make them weep

To tell them to run away from home before

I start molesting them and get put in jail

Leaving them in some foster care translation

Small orphanage to mercies of bad people

But in the end destined to call them stupid 

Fucks all four of them as they turn out to be

Just that and little more except handsome lil

Devils that I can't do anything to without

Going back to jail and I ask you

Is it fair?

Fair to be separated from the magical wings

Of imagination by force as my cum my chair

The chair a friend gave me and the other 

Chair from the other friend oh I could go on

I could describe them for you each one two

Three Four Five yes and their bodies

Their cocks their asses but I won't

That's all I have left and that will go soon enough

Off to the great dumping ground in the sky

Where the trashman doesn't charge.