The Contractor

Reibetanz, John (1944 - 0)

1When God made me, there was a war on:

2Supplies were scarce, so He did it on the cheap.

3Oh, not that He produced a moron

4Or paraplegic by starving my fetal sleep --

5No, He laid a solid foundation

6Of bone and tissue for the little house. (If Mother

7Smoked like a chimney through my gestation,

8That's free will, not His fault, and I'm sure He'd rather

9She hadn't.) It was not on the basic structure

10But on pricier options He stinted. After the unlicensed

11Plumbing burst in an early rupture,

12The narrow air ducts blocked with asthma, and I sensed

13At the second or third attack that I'd be

14Spending my whole life paying for His penny-wise

15Pound-foolish sense of economy.

16And what kind of contractor, if any, buys

17Windows so worthless a horn-rimmed casing's

18Required to make them work? Or a double door

19That won't shut without metal bracings?

20I would have taken a loss and moved out, but for

21Something I found in the attic: a box

22Crammed with words of all description -- brick ones,

23Finely-scrolled wooden ones, intox-

24Icating, flowing silky ones. The fictions

25I framed with those words were more than enough

26To make the place liveable, though it's taken time:

27New front, new walkways, costly stuff

28Growing around the foundations. Now that I'm

29Renovated, I plan to expand

30The business: all (townhouses, exotic

31Holiday villas, commercial and

32Industrial parks) nothing if not chic,

33In fact -- why keep my great end dim? --

34My ultimate goal, in ten-point boldface print's

35A God more opulent than the chintz-

36Y one who framed me. Or the one who penned Him.

Publication Notes

Morning Watch (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1995): 48.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire