There's nothing shallow about shag carpet

She is away on business this week, and I’m on my third sick-day of the month. Explaining to my boss that oppressed-erosis is spreading faster than swine flue turned out to be harder than expected. At any rate, I’m sitting at home, staple gun in hand I begin self-medication.
* * * * *
This one was disheveled, knotted like dread locks, an old sheep dog resting in the corner and just too large to go unnoticed. I imagined the smell of must permeating out from between the fibers within a year of purchase. I reached out to run my fingers through the tacky shag rug –Broadloom carpet, 50% off all shades available resembling baby food products.
I heard the ever-present clacking grow louder as she passed through the different aisles, working her way between the massive pillars of rolled up carpet –Atlantis, the lost city of home furnishings hadn’t swallowed her as I had hoped. The heels powered onward, smacking the ground like a judge’s gavel, commanding order and attention with each stride. She announced her importance to the scuffed linoleum and continued pass a display of hanging welcome mats bordered with white kittens and daisies. She finally emerged out from the labyrinth of various home décor and halted just behind my right shoulder. I pictured her stomping all over the kitten’s faces, wiping the dirt off her black leather shoes on “home is where the heart is”
“Ew…” Her hands grasped her hipbones as she hissed her disapproval at my find, just before whisking around and continuing along the row of carpets, pumping out a familiar rhythm. I reached out –clack, pushing my fingers deep –clack, into the thick rejected microfibers –clack. “We are not buying that, it’s tacky and outdated,” objection! Clack –overruled.
It was about four moths ago when the change happened. Suddenly the life I had been living was no longer acceptable. How I could live in such a dump was an unimaginable feat, a sort of phenomenal decadence that I had come to call my own routine. For starters, the refrigerator I own, did not come equipped with the all-new must-have built-in ice machine. Second off, my bathroom door hinges are silver but the know is gold. Everyone knows that the only time It’s acceptable for those two to clash is when singing the classic Girlscout tune about making new friends and keeping the old, one is silver and the other is… you get the point. Yet, most importantly, the living room’s carpet is, in fact, brown. Absurd, preposterous I know, definitely time for a 3,000-dollar change.
I could hear her voice seeping out of the hardwood floor aisle, the ‘raise your home’s value’ aisle. I abandoned the rug city to save a cornered employee from having the same misfortune as the kittened faced welcome mats.
“How soon can it be installed?” she stood about four inches taller in her heels than the slouching employee. With exact precision and effortless monotony he spouted off the well-rehearsed response of numbers, prices, reliability and before he had finished his speech my recite was printed, crumpled, and stuffed back into my anorexic wallet. Within the following week I was promised to be lying on a glorious solid oak floor… comfy.

* * * * *
So here I am, on the floor with rug burned knees and pride, slamming the last few staples down through the shag carpet and into the glossed wood. She has just stumbled into what was expected to be her perfectly pale world and now seems paralyzed in the kitchen, gawking at the scene of anarchy being rolled out before her. I wait for her to say something, or self-combust, whichever comes first. She eases into the room, four-inch pumps sinking into my revolution, getting tangled, smothered, and muffled out. “There’s nothing shallow about shag carpet.”

An Orange Solstice

Slow motion
Twirl
Of a wanna be
Grapefruit grace,
She
threatens to drip,
Tip
Out of orbit.

The wax of her
Shine,
The glares of
Bruises I caused,
She
Remains taunt –dense
Patient,
And evermore delicate.

Behind the dark
Side
Of this orange moon
I break surface tension
She
Exhales in bursts of
Citrus
Acid into to air,

Clogging the space
Beyond
My cheekbones and
Under my tongue.
She
Bites. I taste
Lunar
Eclipses in s l o w m o t i o n.

I am the hairball of this establishment

I am the hairball of this establishment
Better yet - the molting cat
Coughing them.
--Curled
In the creases
Leather sofa.

Another just
Just another
--Another
Stone-faced band
Stumbles Awoken
Fresh
Parent’s basement’s through
To the back of my
Hardbean Café.

Dress-code reads
Red
Across their eyes:
Beanies and jeans
--uncompromisingly tight
Mocha-frappe-foaming-something
Just or other
Or other just
--with extra sugar.
“straight up”

Stretch, knead, stalk, weave
Between
The legs of
Chairs
The legs of
Mock-up hipsters, 2010
My presence noticed unknown
Blatant
Obligation to acknowledge
Neglected
Pet me.

I do own this place
-so they forget.

Curled
In the foam of
String-paste
Girl(s)
Drink, she flails her arms
HiCcUp rhythm
Mucus power chords
--retreat

Back
Stuck myself in wrinkles of leather
Like I Said
“I am the hairball of this establishment"