We ate breakfast with our plumber
the other day in our kitchen.
We had called him to fix a pipe.
Angels and devils chattered in it day and night.
They argued over who was in charge of our house.
And why we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan
after the hostilities were over.
We didn't mind the domestic arguments.
It was the political discussion
that drove us mad.
We told them to take their fighting
down the street to Hooligan's Bar
or to the UN
but they wouldn't listen.
Their debating was keeping us awake at night.
Ted Koppel couldn't shut them up.
So we called the plumber.
And he came quite quickly.
Must have thought it was a big job.
But it wasn't. He said
we could have done it ourselves.
Something about bleeding valves.
He seemed miffed
that he had laid out his Wall Street Journal
on our floor for almost nothing.
He would teach us so we wouldn't bother him again.
How to silence angels and devils
with a phillips screwdriver,
a dime,
and the Wall Street Journal.
His minimum charge was for an hour's work.
The pipe took fifteen minutes.
He advised us to invest in bonds
in this low interest high risk economy.
He said Bush would not have had to fight this war
if it weren't for all the bleeding heart
liberals and their gay children with their SUVs.
A good gas guzzling rear wheel drive pickup
truck should have been good enough for them.
It was for him.
All that gas keeping our economy moving toward peace.
He drank his coffee black.
In a rage we beat him over the head
with our dead calico cat named Maud.
He took the two Ben Franklins
we slipped into his pocket
under the table.
We watched the leaves fall from our maple like large yellow snowflakes.
Martha L. Deed lives on the banks of the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda in
a house whose crises and misfortunes cause poetry to be made. Recent publications include: Milk, Shampoo, Stirring, Moria, nthposition, Gypsy, Edifice Wrecked, and web art collaborations with Millie Niss in The Iowa Review on the Web and elsewhere. Her website: www.sporkworld.org/Deed.