VITAMINS AND MINERALS

1. The Rooms Look Bad
2. The Man, So Stuck
3. He Wants to Move
4. He Takes a Nap
5. He Falls Away
6. He Sleeps Too Much
7. He Needs to Breathe
8. He Finds the Book
9. Just for Example
10. And So He Does
11. Just Follow Me
12. He Grabs Some Cake
13. It Comes to This
14. The Soul Seems Lost
15. Kick Ass




7.

He needs to breathe. He needs to breathe.

Open up his lungs. Open up his veins.
Passage to his throat and heart, to and from his brains.

He needs to breathe. He needs to breathe.

And concentrate on doing so.
Allow the function and the beauty to take its course and flow.
He needs to be more in tune with how his body works.
Pay attention to the kinks and all the little quirks.
He begins to breathe long and deep with no awareness,
More so from necessity, because of actions that were careless.

His body just demands it.
Each organ system now commands it.
Overfed, but undernourished.
Big and fat, and overflourished.
He needs to think a little less.
No need to constantly obsess.
For when he thinks, he thinks too much.
And in his head, he loses touch.
He finds fiendish frenzy right behind his fiendish face.
In the depths, or shallowness, of his cerebral space.

HIS SOUL:

I don’t mean to sound so general. But you need to take this mineral.

Could he have heard what he just heard?
That voice, that sound, that string of words?

This voice was not his mind, he thinks, for he was thinking something else.
But this voice, he knows, must be a part, somewhere, of himself.

Very clear, but without a volume or external sound.
What part of him has he discovered? What find has he just found?

HIS SOUL:

With every breath you take, my friend, you generate free radicals.

And disease should surely find a home if you continue these sabbaticals.

And though you think you must be tired and need a lot of rest,

The reason seems to me, my friend, that you ignore the part of you that’s most alive and best.

And to muster up your energy, your strength, and confidence,

I give you now the craving, POOF!, for antioxidants!

THE MAN:

A craving? That’s a craving? I want cake and pie!

HIS SOUL:

No, you want antioxidants unless you want to die!

Remember once you bought that book HOW TO FEEL BIONIC?

THE MAN:

Don’t remind me. That was painful.

HIS SOUL:

Painful?

THE MAN:

Yes! I got it at that place where I got my first colonic!



He needs to breathe. He needs to breathe.

03/19/2008

Author's Note: Vitamins and Minerals was written in June 2003. It was originally performed as a One-Man-Poetry-Show at One Arm Red Theatre in DUMBO, Brooklyn. You can read the poem in its entirety. Or broken up in 15 individual pieces.

Posted on 03/19/2008
Copyright © 2024 David Garner