Sunday, January 30, 2011

Bed Bedlam

Image borrowed from Yahoo


Bed Bedlam

Spending over a thousand bucks
for a box spring and mattress, always
pisses me off, every decade or so--
even though my bulk has created
a form-fitting crevice on my side
and everything rolls to the center;
even as back and neck aches are
much too morning prevalent, even
when informercials late at night
show blow-up photos of the dreaded
dust mites that gorge themselves
on my constantly shedding skin cells,
after flipping the mattress 57 times
every which way to find the level--
and then there is the eternal quandary
about “which” mattress to buy,
a waterbed or the sleep-number mattress,
or the bowling ball mattress, or the one
with the wine glass that will not spill
as a child leaps up and down beside it?

For God’s sake, this is not Henry VIII’s spacious
canopy bed, or Gauguin’s panda ma palm mattress,
or Cleopatra’s goose-down love nest complete
with cheeta-skin pillow cases, or Andy Warhol’s
Campbell Soup-shaped bed, or Jackie Gleason’s
huge perfectly round bed, or Winston Churchill’s
bulldog-shaped day bed, or Bill Clinton’s
cigar-shaped napper--and besides, these nights
my wife and I spend more time sleeping in our
respective recliners than in the conjugal wrestling mat
center piece in our bedroom
anyway.

Glenn Buttkus

January 2011

Posted over on Applehouse Poetry

Would you like the Author to read this poem to you?

5 comments:

Lynne Renner said...

Funny, I can relate and commiserate.

Jannie Funster said...

Definitely go for the sleep numbers!

Xxoo

Tess Kincaid said...

The worst part about buying a new king boxspring/mattress set a few years back, was squeezing it up the low ceilinged manor staircase.

Arne Zaslove said...

I suggest a futon. You can fluff it up, roll it up, and when you get up smooth it out - and when your spouse rolls over, you don’t get a kick in the privates, or at least you don’t wake up from the gravity pull. Be sure and get a frame that allows it and you to breath.

az

Guy Marsh said...

Try a Tempur-Pedic. You will pay through the nose but it's worth every cent and more! By the way, your essay was great!