THE CLEANING LADY IS AGAINST ME

THE CLEANING LADY IS AGAINST ME

Rumors spread like wildfire in public spaces.
A blabbermouth friend invented for me a life of womanizing and carousing
And in the middle of the meeting house
Made merry remarks about my character, covering it with criminal clouds.

While the haggard cleaning lady swept and dusted, overhearing all,
And wondering just what sort of awful evil
Lurked in my heretofore face-only-a-mom could adore
Sweet and innocent countenance.
(Friends can be wicked rogues, how well I now know.)

The cleaning lady knows my secrets.
She knows all about the lovers and the beer stains on my bedcovers.
She knows the sounds of my lovers’ voices,
My social diseases, my ill-informed choices,
And she is sure to spread the word to her cleaning lady friends,
And soon they all will have heard, and I will be at wit’s end.

Her disinfectants and her vacuums, her air fresheners and perfumes.
They will never clean away my friend’s loose words in these public rooms.

See that cleaning lady, go fetch her,
She’ll tell you that I am a lecher.
She knows deep, dark secrets psychologists would kill for.
All my panache and regrets, my appetites and drives.
And all the knowledge she possesses would make the prim churchwomen
In my small town break out in horrified hives.

The cleaning lady pretends to only sweep,
Her nose out of others’ business to dignifiedly keep.
But I know that she’s a silent judge who bears an angry grudge.
And at night I trudge home with the awful truth
That the cleaning lady is against me.

-BRUCE POTTS
COPYRIGHT 2008
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED