THE CONTRACTOR
When God made me, there was a war on:
Supplies were scarce, so He did it on the cheap.
Oh, not that He produced a moron
Or paraplegic by starving my fetal sleep --
No, He laid a solid foundation
Of bone and tissue for the little house. (If Mother
Smoked like a chimney through my gestation,
That's free will, not His fault, and I'm sure He'd rather
She hadn't.) It was not on the basic structure
But on pricier options He stinted. After the unlicensed
Plumbing burst in an early rupture,
The narrow air ducts blocked with asthma, and I sensed
At the second or third attack that I'd be
Spending my whole life paying for His penny-wise
Pound-foolish sense of economy.
And what kind of contractor, if any, buys
Windows so worthless a horn-rimmed casing's
Required to make them work? Or a double door
That won't shut without metal bracings?
I would have taken a loss and moved out, but for
Something I found in the attic: a box
Crammed with words of all description -- brick ones,
Finely-scrolled wooden ones, intox-
Icating, flowing silky ones. The fictions
I framed with those words were more than enough
To make the place liveable, though it's taken time:
New front, new walkways, costly stuff
Growing around the foundations. Now that I'm
Renovated, I plan to expand
The business: all (townhouses, exotic
Holiday villas, commercial and
Industrial parks) nothing if not chic,
In fact -- why keep my great end dim? --
My ultimate goal, in ten-point boldface print's
A God more opulent than the chintz-
Y one who framed me. Or the one who penned Him.
When God made me, there was a war on:
Supplies were scarce, so He did it on the cheap.
Oh, not that He produced a moron
Or paraplegic by starving my fetal sleep --
No, He laid a solid foundation
Of bone and tissue for the little house. (If Mother
Smoked like a chimney through my gestation,
That's free will, not His fault, and I'm sure He'd rather
She hadn't.) It was not on the basic structure
But on pricier options He stinted. After the unlicensed
Plumbing burst in an early rupture,
The narrow air ducts blocked with asthma, and I sensed
At the second or third attack that I'd be
Spending my whole life paying for His penny-wise
Pound-foolish sense of economy.
And what kind of contractor, if any, buys
Windows so worthless a horn-rimmed casing's
Required to make them work? Or a double door
That won't shut without metal bracings?
I would have taken a loss and moved out, but for
Something I found in the attic: a box
Crammed with words of all description -- brick ones,
Finely-scrolled wooden ones, intox-
Icating, flowing silky ones. The fictions
I framed with those words were more than enough
To make the place liveable, though it's taken time:
New front, new walkways, costly stuff
Growing around the foundations. Now that I'm
Renovated, I plan to expand
The business: all (townhouses, exotic
Holiday villas, commercial and
Industrial parks) nothing if not chic,
In fact -- why keep my great end dim? --
My ultimate goal, in ten-point boldface print's
A God more opulent than the chintz-
Y one who framed me. Or the one who penned Him.