Elegy For Abandoned Furniture Poem by Raj Dronamraju

My friend took home a couch that he found near a garbage dumpster
It was infested with bugs and he had to wash and fumigate it thoroughly

And I saw a broke down oven
With its mouth wide open
Seeking cakes it will never again bake
And a sort of surrogate life no longer granted

No one wants a table keeled over on one side
And no one rescues a shattered lamp from the side of the road
No more room on a bus bench for anyone else to sit
I sat and waited for a mode of transportation that would never arrive
I sat in a left behind armchair that was damp and a freed spring poked me in the small of the back

I thought of corpses and I thought of the span of things
And people talking about a toaster as if it was a beloved member of the family
The bereaved will find a replacement family member next time there's a good sale

I thought of the abandoned props of a barely functioning existence
Their meaning is a material world that is meaningless
That means more when it all becomes trash someone has discarded