Cleaning My Room

The union rule is
if ten drops of rain
fall into a ten inch circle,
that is officially a rain day.
Barry, the idiot, actually has a ten inch circle in his truck,
but we never listen to him or it,
When it rains
we get wet.
We quack to hassle the foreman,
but unless it's really coming down
we are just like the trees. We soak it up.
Nothing sucks quite like trying to move around and build
while you're baking in damp jeans with a wet tool belt.
There's the whole thrill of puddles and extension cords too.
The electricty / water / human thing not mixing and all.

This morning it really came down so we got the day off.
I can take the time to see what I live in.
Clothes twist in braided heaps
and unpaid bills partly opened.
Mud and sawdust,
beer cans, now ashtrays,
and coffe cups with rings stained in stacked on desk and floor.

I hear my mother's old voice
and condemnation speak from the piles...
"You can't even see the floor in this place."
She would have been right.
Howd it get like this again?

I sigh the shame
and fill the bucket
and the smell of bleach
burns again.
I know next week, in two maybe,
everything will tangle once more.
She was right about more things than I gave her credit for.

There are those people who just seem to be neat,
to get along with others.
I was never one of them.
I'm always cleaning up,
but it all stays dirty,
and the floor stays covered.

Three garbage bags
and hours later,
there is order here.
The apartment is swept,
the desk is clean
the dishes stacked
and shining.
It looks bigger,
but when I look down, I finally see
there are long scars running in the floor.

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