Office Furniture that Breathes–a poem

---

 

You are a door that only opens

For its messages to be sent,

Always closed when I’ve something to say.

You are Ann Landers on your mouthy pedestal.

You are no better than the racists you hate,

Standing that far left.

You are the mind open to how it thinks.

You are the privacy fence

That keeps out the world.

You are like a cool, damp cloth to my ideas.

You are like a car’s horn to my nerves.

You are like failed sex to my ego.

You are like spoiled meat to my hunger.

But when I go beyond here,

You will remain like all the rest of the furniture.

 

Spring 2000—English 304; Creative Writing;

Professor Sandra Marshburn

***

Sandra Marshburn asked us to write something using metaphor and simile, and she suggested that I try to write something that wasn’t as positive as what I was typically writing. This is what came out. It’s about a professor we had at State who was exactly like this. This piece is nearly 18 years old, and this is probably the first time anyone has seen it, outside of the two of us and Davy the Forest Bard Jones, the archivist of my work. Hope you find something of value here. Like a lot of these, reading it shows me that it isn’t as bad as I would have thought.