An Accident

I left the detergent, half lidded

resting guilty on the washing machine

and it slipped (things slip) 

and took possession of the bathroom floor

so that my grandpa couldn't get up

and he had to call to my father for half an hour

and so my father made me clean up

the thick blue ooze

and it snuck into the pores of my fingers

like the radiocative blood of something strange and foreign,

repellent in its liturgical density

and my father asked me why, why

(the yell perched on the apex of his mouth) 

I had so little common sense

and I couldn't say anything

but let that familiar tremor trickle

through my nervous system

and wonder myself

if poetry was any worthy excuse

whether a passion for words also implied

an extraordinary unwillingness

to abide the laws of commenstance

and plumb through unpoetic circumstances.