Monday, April 27, 2009

My muse is one whacked out chick

I have no idea why I wrote this parody of The Windmills of Your Mind a few years ago, but she told me that you all wanted to read it...

The Jackets That You Find


Flat, like a placket in a jacket, like a seam within a seam.
Hemmed and topstitched, overlapping, bearing cuffs whose buttons gleam.
Like a bobbin that’s unwinding through a scratched and dented plate,
Like a selvedge torn and ragged, bulging seams you’ve come to hate,
Like some bargain basement fabric, fiber content still unknown,
With the dye-lots all unmatching, colors, patterns overblown,
Like the sleeves that are not lined
In the jackets that you find.

Like the stripes off grain and crooked, running lines diagonally
Down the left front to the pocket where the zipper ought to be,
Like a zig-zag set too narrow, with the tension out of whack,
Like the five eights seam allowance sewing past a tailor tack,
Like a needle that’s unthreaded, breaking off before the seam,
And the spools of thread are falling off the table in my dream,
Like the sleeves that are not lined
In the jackets that you find.

Scissors sharper than remembered
Thimbles tumbling in a sieve.
Were the pattern notches matching
On the patch sewn to the sleeve?
Bits and pieces, scraps and garbage
Litter round the sewing scene.
Have the screws been freshly oiled?
Is the foot-feet nice and clean?
With extension cord now plugged in
And the light already on,
Are you ready to start sewing?
For our time is nearly gone.
With the iron hot and steaming
Are you finally aware
That the garment you are making
Isn’t something that you’d wear?

Like a placket in a jacket,
Like a seam within a seam,
With the nap laid out the wrong way
Pieces never as they seem
For the stitches do not bind
On the sleeves that are not lined
In the jackets that you find.

2 comments:

rogueknitter said...

I am simply speechless...

Dark Star in the Morning said...

I cannot read this without hearing it sung.