© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.

STUFF!

Braking for all sales—estate, yard,
auction, rummage, moving, garage—as well
as all thrifts—Saint Vinny’s, Sally Ann’s,
Good Will, Open Hands—we stop
at nothing when it comes
to further stuffing our cars
already stuffed with stuff. Good
stuff, gaudy stuff, fun stuff, stuff
so funky, nobody even knows
what in thingamaBob Fulton’s name it is
stuff—doohickey, tchotchke,
shoot-‘n’-holler-Sherlock-Holmes,
are-you-blowing-menthol-smoke-
rings-up-my-royal-kazoo, gimcrack, whim-wham,
geegaw stuff. You bet, we need it all,
every teensy-weeny bit of it, in order
to maximize space, to defy the emptiness
of life, high-grade each day,

shirk the slightest minimalistic
floor-to-ceiling glimpse—basement,
stairwell, closets, crawl space, attic, halls,
heart, never stacked quite deep
enough, always one more niche,
fissure, cubbyhole, cranny, crevice, nook,
one more nano-scintilla of our very being
still unfilled to the nth degree with—need
we say it yet again?—STUFF!

                     For Barbara McFarlane & George Carlin