I opened up my laptop at eleven-thirty at night,
the house was quiet, everything was theoretically right,
I needed one specific thing, a simple little tool,
but one specific thing has never been the rule.
The recommendations showed me what I didn’t know I needed,
and something in the algorithm read my wants and seeded,
a garden of desirable things I couldn’t pass,
I put twelve items in my cart before the hour passed.
One-click purchasing is engineered for this,
designed for the very moment when willpower misses,
I’m buying things I’ll open once and never use again,
a kitchen gadget, a cable I’ve already bought ten,
a book I’ll add to the stack I’ll get around to when,
the good intentions pile up like all the rest of them,
by midnight I’ve spent two hundred dollars on the site,
on things that felt completely necessary in the night.
The Amazon cart is always full and always waiting there,
everything I didn’t know I needed fills the air,
click and add and checkout and the box arrives in two,
the Amazon cart is the appetite that always comes right through,
the Amazon cart at midnight when the judgment’s soft and low,
the Amazon cart knows everything about the way I go,
I’m buying and consuming till the credit card complains,
the Amazon cart and the hunger are the very same refrain.
The packages arrive throughout the week in little waves,
brown boxes on the doorstep like the gifts from shopping caves,
I open each with genuine excitement for a beat,
then set it on the counter with the others incomplete,
the gadget needs assembly and the book needs a slot,
the cable goes into the drawer of cables that I got,
but the opening is the part I’m actually here for,
the anticipation and the arrival, nothing more.
I’m not even buying things I want, I want the want,
the hunger of acquisition has become the jaunt,
the scroll through pages of the endless catalog at night,
is its own kind of pleasure and its own kind of right,
the cart fills up and empties and fills up again tomorrow,
the credit card statement arrives with something like sorrow,
but also pride in the volume of the commerce I sustain,
a one-man economy of need and want and gain.
The Amazon cart is always full and always waiting there,
everything I didn’t know I needed fills the air,
click and add and checkout and the box arrives in two,
the Amazon cart is the appetite that always comes right through,
the Amazon cart at midnight when the judgment’s soft and low,
the Amazon cart knows everything about the way I go,
I’m buying and consuming till the credit card complains,
the Amazon cart and the hunger are the very same refrain.
My wife goes through the boxes on a clearing-out mission,
donation pile and return pile with the surgical precision,
she holds up the espresso tool I bought six months ago,
still in the original packaging, she wants to know,
I tell her I’ve been meaning to break it out real soon,
she puts it in the donation bag without a further rune,
I wait three days and order a replacement, slightly better,
I am a man who follows every consumptive letter.
The Amazon cart is always full and always waiting there,
everything I didn’t know I needed fills the air,
click and add and checkout and the box arrives in two,
the Amazon cart is the appetite that always comes right through,
the Amazon cart at midnight when the judgment’s soft and low,
the Amazon cart knows everything about the way I go,
I’m buying and consuming till the credit card complains,
the Amazon cart and the hunger are the very same refrain.