My Poetry is Sexier than Your Old Smelly Chotchkies

Every other Friday, my keepers let me out of the windowless dungeon that is my office and send me off to make money for them by working in the local volunteer-run thrift store.

I used to hate thrift stores.

The thought of paying money to wear the nasty, smelly old duds of some (probably) diabetic crotchety old lady with head lice made my gag reflexes act up. Now days, people use the word “vintage” in the same way they use “designer label” – like it’s a good thing. These people need mind enemas. The word vintage makes me think of urine-colored lace that reeks of mothballs.

However, working at the thrift shop has become a tiny beacon of light in the shitty dark tunnel of lameness that is my work week. It’s like being Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean – you’re locked up in jail, and then one fine day you’re busted out and you take to the high seas to look for buried treasure. And while I don’t get to carry a sword, I do get to battle completely bat shit crazy people and hunt for interesting loot.

When I say interesting, I mean the funkiest crap on the planet. Some of the stuff I’ve seen makes me wonder not why someone bought it, but how it was even manufactured in the first place.

Even better, the store is often teeming with loonies.

Looney type number one is the type of customer who smells like death and tries to get discounts on things that were only a dollar to begin with. They mostly live under bridges.

Looney number two comes from the super old volunteers who are on power trips because they’ve volunteered longer than other people. These crazy woman have become dictators of thrift – they ask you ridiculous things like, “Do you know how to properly use a hanger?” Shut it, grandma. I’m not retarded.

Well, anyway, I realized the other day that I had quite the little collection of camera phone shots of weird thrift store merchandise. And, what better way to express their complete and undeniable lameness than through haiku?!

Hence, my photo slash poetry essay on the high culture of thrifting:

Oh! Michael Jackson
Mated with a French hooker
On polyester.

Bedazzled denim
Once met a pink tutu
And never let go.

High School Musical
Was not about teen trannies
Or girls named Ryan.

Fairy salesman
Goes leaf to leaf with products –
Angel dust and meth.

This rusted razor
Promises sunbeams on your
Wrists, emo slut.

Bozo the clown was
A custom shirt, but is now
On the dollar rack.

Fred, the gay cowboy,
Loved his sequined get up –
And zoophilia.

Creepy siblings
Assault your eyes and brain,
Assault each other.

Stop staring at me
Alligator brown bear thing –
You got a boob job?