2000/crockpot

After all these years
I’m thinking of buying a crockpot.
Because I’m still distracted by hunger,
by how dirty the kitchen floor is,
the guilt I feel over the untended yard.
After all these years I still
don’t have it together to keep us fed,
the place picked up, my work done.
I get going for a while, then fall
off the wagon ’cause I don’t sleep well,
or stay up too late cuddling on the couch.

The things were always so damned big –
crock pots that is – and such ugly colors.
I see them in thrift stores and always cringe.
I don’t like my food electrocuted,
but I am thinking, perhaps, I could
go out for chai and come home
to find my lunch cooked.
It is as desperate as these solutions
always are – well, maybe not quite.
I have been more desperate.

Sometimes I attach transcendent properties
to the potential of some object,
like the insulated cup which promises
to keep my tea warm so I don’t
have to keep popping up.

I’m approaching that time of the perfected life,
the age when you know exactly what you want
and finally get it right.
I’ve known the details for quite some time,
but gathering the goods is another story.
Raglan sleeves, V-necks, knee-skimming skirts
the baggy shirts I like for work.

I keep thinning the place out,
getting rid of gifts I don’t love,
things I don’t like looking at.
I wake up at night realizing
I’ll be down to one set of candle sticks,
my favorite vase. I feel a sense of ease
when there is nothing superfluous in sight,
when I am down to essentials.

I realize today that I’m comfortable
with an abundance of supplies,
but not stuff.
Meaning toilet paper and
reams of paper by the box.
But just the basics in clothes and pots.
As always I wonder how everyone else
is getting on with these dilemmas.
I, for one, am thinking
of buying a crock pot.

1/3/00