by Santiago Lake
The following poem is copyright protected and any use of this work without the permission of the author is expressly prohibited.
There they are again,
Just as they are every night,
Foul, filthy, with caked on food residue.
They seem to bate me, and taunt me like young children laughing
at the new kid in class.
Every day they wait for me to come home.
They know that I will be the one slaving over them,
To make certain that they are spotless.
I must be sure of their purity,
Lest I hear the Banshee screams of the woman from whose loins
I emerged.
So there they are sick with green and brown goo.
They smell like a thousand poorly cooked meals in a festering
desert heat.
They are the DISHES.
As I step into the kitchen,
I am often reminded of an old western where the villain and the
hero have showdown in the street.
I only think of this because,
On many nights I feel as though I've been gunned down by the Encrusted
Melted Cheese Gang.
The first and sometimes most formidable task in cleaning the pungent
citizens of the world of dishland is to stack them.
When stacked they are a virtual Parthenon of dirty plates and
bowls, greasy spoons, gunk encrusted forks, and jelly stained
knives. Only one with experience should manage the unenviable
task, fore any show of weakness will be taken advantage of.
Now comes the reckoning
Where a person finds out if they have the will to go on.
Dish water, summoned from the fiery pools of the netherworld
Scalding hot water which makes hands wrinkle like the passage
of time.
A feeling of nausea overwhelms me as I lift each piece of crockery,
glass, and metal only to submerge them in the frothy hot depths
of the brackish water.
They travel to meet Poseidon and perhaps be cleansed by his mighty
trident.
Then like the phoenix that rises from its own ashes, the dish
wear returns.
But now as if to somehow mock my contempt of them,
They sit sparkling in the twilight.
Water slowly runs down their lengths as they luxuriate in their
own utopia of cleanliness.
No longer are they dirty,
No longer offensive.
Their taunts haunt my being no longer.
As the slow calm illuminates me
I realize that this feeling will be short lived.
For tomorrow holds new meals to ingest
And more dirty dishes to wash…..