Suburban Outlaw (Mildly) Terrorizes the Block 

 
Suburban Outlaw occasionally toys
with the rules and conventionality
of civic life. Every few months or so, 
he employs a subtle sense of malice
and trickery, much like wily pistol-packing
highwaymen might have done years ago.  

Here is how his domestic desperado routine
works. Residents on the townhouse block know
gray trash bins get picked up every Wednesday, 
while blue recycle bins are restricted
to every other week. The schedule
is clearly spelled out on the City website.

No matter – busy, obedient, hardworking folk
remain so distracted by life’s uncertainties, 
they easily ignore the easy and undeniable. 

So, as dark approaches the night preceding
a non-recycle pick-up day, Suburban Outlaw
periodically rolls both gray and blue bins 
out to the curb in preparation. Everyone
up and down the street observes and responds
by doing the same, unable to remember
what occurred the previous week, unwilling
to tolerate the risk of being wrong, of being left
out, of missing an opportunity to discard soda
cans and a mounting inventory of Amazon boxes.  

Then, before sunrise the following day
he sneakily rolls his blue recycle bin back
into the garage, abandoning his neighbors,
who by afternoon’s end feel foolish upon
discovering their blue bin lids left untouched. 

At that time Suburban Outlaw will stand on
the balcony wearing a crooked, villainous grin,
a cold one in hand, and as the sun sets in the west,
cooly survey the colorful consequence
of his brigand ways, wistfully regretting
that in ancient days he may have shot up
a saloon or chased a sheriff out of town.