The Appliance of Doom

"Sometimes I wax poetic.
People tell me I'm better off
waxing my legs."

~~Me~~

Dear Mom, I’ll be home late.

Don’t wait up, I have a date

Adorns your door, in lovely prose,

Along with cards and magnets and one of those

Stick-on calendars that, (I'm agog!) 

Is a full year older than the dog.

(Who turned five last November.)

Inside your cavernous interior

Goodies wait to inflate my grand posterior.

Along with cheese and weenies, which reside

There in the dank dark, deep inside~~

Unrecognized because of mold,

And veggies, unexpectedly grown old.

(In the crisper~~a misnomer, if you ask me.)

Perhaps I should dispose of jam

That has sugared. And there is that ham~~

I stuck back on the second shelf

To keep it all just for myself.

To eat it after company left.

But it’s rotten now and I’m bereft.

(Because I forgot about it and now it’s green.)

There are German gherkins, once a delight,
Blackened and shriveled from some dark blight
That's changed them from food to something other.
(I swear I don't know why I bother.)
Green and blue coronets grow strong
On lunchmeat, on sausage, and that's just wrong.
(I bought the stuff a week ago, or was it five?)

Ah, refrigerator, you are a grand invention.

You do your job without pretension,

Though your coils are dusty down below,

Where saber-toothed dust bunnies surely grow.

There are fingerprints smeared upon your door,

And cooties in this crumb-littered drawer.

(Where I keep fast-food packets of ketchup.)

I need to clean you, a lofty goal.

And so I’ll pour milk in a bowl,

And plunk it down there on the floor~~

In front of your propped-open door.

And kill the creatures that crawl forth,

Then vow to do better, for what it’s worth.

(I’ve made this promise countless times.)