Socks Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

Today is the day goddammit.
Not just another Monday
with all its pressures and urges
and society commitments and
the ah so expected lousy weather.

No, I am calling everyone's bluff,
crimes against my dignity have
under some cockamamie disguise
been perpetrated again, a clear case
of repeat offenses in the name of,
and under cover for the vanity flair.

It's all about socks, needless to say,
a never ending serial embezzlement
in nylon, rayon, cotton and mixed threads.
He should have, by rights and decency
moved out a decade ago, out and away
to where ordinary K-Marts and Mrs.Sears
are the proper purveyors of fabric footwear.

I was on to his game, aided and abetted by
no other than his own mother, spoiled brat,
and I am the fifth wheel parked in the weather,
so who would blame me for resorting to
abject ingenuity born from sheer desperation,
a scheme which was certain to derail all
including his best laid plans. Stomp on them
I would in secret but publicly there would be
as a weekly routine spanning many months,
sock buying sprees governed by strict rules.

Having ascertained offspring's strong dislike
for licorice purple and gooseshitgreen,
the strategy was one of utter genius and,
to no one's surprise, resting on the pillars of
brilliance and strategic supremacy. Oh yes.
Drawer after drawer filled with MY socks,
some cotton, some nylon and some mixed stuff.

Before Christmas I obtained, in a streak of luck,
four pairs for the price of two, real beauties,
with a fluorescent stripe encircling the upper ankle
and re-enforced heel and toe regions as well as
elastic twice woven in the factories of Switzerland.

I still had my suspicion, of course, looking casually
at the boy's lower extremeties while encouraging,
by example, a rapid stride which would lend
a rather sporty swinging bounce to our locomotion,
allowing me that revealing glimpse at the border
between sock and the lower end of the instep.

And today, on this miserable Monday morning,
with all its unreasonable demands and noises,
shrill and unconducive to recovery from ethanol excess
there are NO SOCKS! ! ! Blow me down again.

Postponing, by sheer necessity, all detective work
where will I find a pair of any colour, where indeed?
Believe you me, I feel the nagging of a new suspicion,
and vow to have another look at her, down from the knees.