Another poem I wrote for a FUUN service
This is a confession
I don’t like to think about it
I do the chore
I toss it into the bin
I carry it to the alley
I recycle
But I don’t like to think about it
The blue truck lumbers past me
As I wait for the morning bus
A lingering odor in its wake
A foulness that disturbs my coffee
The knife i used in 1997
To spread mayonnaise on a hamburger bun
It’s still out there
Somewhere
The mayonnaise packet too
I think about the city dump
An old man sits in a salvaged chair
Outside a plywood shack
A mutt dog at his feet
Directing things
“Old refrigerators over there!”
“Kitchen trash there!”
“Diapers? On the pile!”
He has too few teeth
The dog has too few legs
This is how I romanticize
The truth though...
The corporations
The billions of dollars
The workers
The truckloads
The waste, shredded and compacted. Sealed away
The barges carting it off to distant lands
The mounds and mounds and mounds
The poverty
The hepatitis
The people
Their lives. Their dreams
I don’t like to think about it