Operation Alternative
Last night struggling through a downpour, dead people rained in my mind, bodies I had hovered over as E.M.T. protecting them from mundane rites of doctors and police officers debating bmw’s and jaguars. A hunched woman knocked me with her cane and whispered, “Angel, Angel” and pointed at store mannequins with half a head, only up to the nose like some politicians I know. I was heading to my new job, Operation Alternative for homeless people and I wondered: What if George Bush walked in naked and hungry, down and out after post-2004 elections? What if Ramal said to me “He’s yours”? And what if I gave George a terry cloth housecoat that said “anarchist antichrist” in big black letters on the back and sent him with corn chips to the end of the line? What if one of the fire breathing clients, spat on George and stole his bourbon bottle? Or what if the clients complained that he smelled worse than newly polluted Texas? But what if George complained that he was surrounded by dirty criminals? “Just like the White House Mr. Bush,” I’d say. What if I asked him for ID and he handed me his insider trading papers? What if I pushed the black emergency button behind the plexiglass and twenty cops came charging in and jumped on and arrested the anarchist-cloaked George for hiding a bottle? Poor dyslexic Prez. Oh Homeless Oh Inmates: It’s just a stormy prophecy, I mumbled, wishing this were a gay city where Mumia Abu-Jamal is honorary citizen and where multi-parties and anarchists can be and where a patriot act is a poet speaking for rights of Guantanamo detainees and Geneva not Republican Conventions. I was following blurry city lights to Operation Alternative where I opened the door on a dozen longing eyes who welcomed my dripping face out of the rain. |