I Shoot the Waiter

If, in a fed up hour

I walk up to the black curtain

and whisper with a shattered breath

the seventy-times-seven things I never thought before

If, in the underfed ages

I step back through shifting layered veils

and mutter to each one

the weary thing it taught me that I suppose it never knew itself

If, under overreaching futures

I burrow in liquid rot recycling arranged by log-filled eyes

and put sneering lips to taste each one

in scrunch-eyed desire that gagging streams might mingle hidden sweetnesses

If, starving at the table of an under-catered, overwrought reality

I shuffle weakly to the waiter ladling bowls of fractals sloppily unlighted

and hiss a bullet throat rebuke

ranting all the somethings that bounty should supply

Will engorged hours burst

and the curtain tear in two?

Will yellowed veils drop flirtation

and embroider plainly what they knew?

Will what’s to come look to glass

and pluck out what is somehow still unseen?

Will waiters dressed in tantalising blacks and whites

serve up tight-fisted Hosts upon the bloody platter

for judgement by the patrons who have never tried to cater?

Will the dusty black box

in the underthought corner of my room

crack its lid and speak glowing gutful guarantees

sprout eyes to leak white saccharine secrets

grow hands insisting I shove my yearning face

into hearty steaming bowls beaming absolutes?

Then I would beg pardon upon pardon

for all the thoughts I couldn’t think,

for defaming ancestral cellular knowings

for rabbit reproductions lusting for demented novelty

for reaching greedy fingers directed by unlighted eyes

for shooting the waiter

while waiting on an hour that may have already come.