Curmudgeon Poem by Morgan Michaels

Not in a million years
would he put up with you
your bourgeois twists, your lies,
your foolish, pettish ways-
the curmudgeon downstairs
who limps to church
but rooms contentedly alone
amidst genial squalor
curtains unstrung and thready throws,
stacks of un-scraped plates
glasses partly filled
with cylinders of dead, yellowing beer,
jetted, rubbed clean in a sec;
blotted windows
clotted flatware
intussuscepted socks
unopened mail
bottles and empty cans
three day old stew on the burner
going-extinct ashtrays
filled with gutted-out butts,
crossed at angles
like bones in an ossuary;
in the corner a conspiracy of garbage sacks;
yet who has thought out ways
the world might be improved
he'd be keen to share
with any willing to listen;
gleefully bets he'll be dead three days
before anyone misses him.
no, not for a million
would he endure you
not for a million-
so offer two.