They spent my life plotting against me. <br />With nothing to do but cultivate themselves, <br />but to be there, aligning their shadows, <br />they were planning to undo me, <br />wanting to own me completely. <br /> <br />They have marched through the rooms, <br />their presences litter the surfaces <br />close at my elbow calling attention. <br />When I sleep they begin with their meetings, <br />when I leave home they hold a convention. <br />The minutes, the notes, the chairman <br />calls order, the lamps signal aye. When I die <br />they'll start in on another, <br />easy at first, learning his ways. <br />Now they're gone, taken from me, good luck. <br />If I kept them I'd never be free. I'd die <br />and have to begin picking everything up, <br />all the waste paper, baby teeth, beards, <br />I'd have to go back for the fingernails. <br /> <br />So I'm shut of them, all the gossip and malice, <br />the tables, the chairs with their jokes on me. <br />All the prying. the scandals. The telephone <br />stored it all up. the books lied to me. <br /> <br />That's why I came here, bringing nothing. <br />There was nothing to do but leave things. <br />I saved only a few: smells of tobacco <br />and blankets, a dream of a waterfall, <br />a length of ribbon, my name, my number, <br />the holes in my suitcase.<br /><br />Ken Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/possessions/
