Angels and Mercy Wait Outside #Poetry by Gabriel Ricard

ANGELS AND MERCY WAIT OUTSIDE
BY GABRIEL RICARD

There are hundreds of TV screens
in this control room. More than there would be
under normal, potentially threatening circumstances.
 
No one else is around,
but you still feel like someone
could show up at any time. At the very least,
someone is definitely aware of where you are,
and how impressed you’ve become with the way
none of the TVs are showing you something
from your past, or something from one of the many
futures you screwed over.
 
Because hindsight.
Because I can’t see the middle
of the latest transitional period,
even though I have the benefit
of the beginning and the likely end.
 
So I panic in the middle.
I ask for understanding
and deep discounts on the cheap stuff
on a Wednesday. More or less
another version of the middle.
 
I might be predictable,
but at least I’ll make you laugh about that.
 
I’ll make you understand
how great it is to walk through
the entirety of that ambitious,
historically/technically inaccurate control room,
and not have to come across anything
I really don’t need to see anymore.
 
You appreciate the presence of ashtrays,
lit cigarettes that will burn casually
for another century,
coffee cups,
the prevailing likelihood of conversations
that were half-started,
or half-finished,
or absolute in not really being important
in the first place.
 
You don’t recognize all of the sitcoms from the 70s
and 80s, but if you’re like me,
you just like the fact that they are there.
 
Then there are the movies,
the broadcasts that never happened,
the ones that were lost in the fire,
and the ones that were lost
because some clod didn’t want to make copies.
 
Stuff you can’t even understand.
If you’re like me,
then you didn’t really take the time
to learn a foreign language.
 
Like me,
you’re pretty sure you know the differences
between Spanish, Russian, and German,
and that’s about it.
 
I usually spend a couple of years in the space,
trying,
but not really being driven by it,
to see if there really is another end to the room.
 
Two years for the fifteen, twenty minutes
I’m asleep. I do my best work under those conditions,
as of late. It’s neither here nor there.
 
The other obvious truth
is that I’m never there
for as long as I would prefer.
 
For example,
you have to really haul ass
to get to the TVs that have the black and white
horror movies that make you want to
live in a dark room with your comforts
for a whole summer.
 
Sometimes,
those TVs aren’t even where they’re supposed to be,
which I suppose bothers me a little.
 
What about you, handsome?
How do you feel about it, sweetie?

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