Outpatient Procedure
The dawn would be nice if it didn’t arrive so early.
I don’t know why I rarely want what I can have.
There’s a logic to animals and to tumbleweed assembly lines
reconfigured between shifts to produce Escalade interiors.
But it doesn’t quench my addiction to you, as a family
of civilian ghosts phase-shifts through the fog lights
piercing an Olive Garden parking lot.
Switch the camera over to movie mode. My favorite
bartender storyboarded the decline of the rural gentry
while clearing away the empties. The remaining spills
dribble uphill at $100 a barrel, like buying a whole CD
to hear one love song or renting a lifeboat by the hour
in the Arctic. I used to be the person in my building
who dragged the trash curbside each week.
A hand moves across the sky. I already said that I’ve made
mistakes, though they don’t include spot–ironing wrinkles
out of the matches stored next to the kerosene and feeding strays
with the other neighborhood housewives while performing
the rain dance. I fade just a little bit when your star goes away.
It could be midnight madness in the middle of the day
and still remain quiet.
But these used hospital slippers fit the system or the individual
watching dirty bathwater swirl down the drain. There goes
our safe space, ignoring a knock at the door. Children don’t give up
on love and say where will the snow carry you?
After 9/11, I felt frozen in place and didn’t leave the city
for almost a year. Then the police came to take
away the pain
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About the Author
Alan Gilbert is a widely published poet and author of Another Future: Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight. He lives in New York City.
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