This morning, I woke
on a bed of weed and shingle,
razor shells and undiluted effluent,
convinced that I could walk on water:
I must lose weight.

But miracles require faith,
and I can only call on skeletons
to exact their pounds of flesh;
while they have everything
to gain, I have nothing left to lose.

Willpower is the strategy
of choice; it bends results,
unsettles scores, and overcomes
a multitude of suicidal sins.
The irony--its engine burns
a thousand suns of energy
per second; at the speed of light
I run a red on Hunger Drive.

The same applies when exercise
comes out to play, a cabaret
of scripted sex adapted for a multiplex
evoking Freud in obsolescent celluloid;
and when the exit theme has died, I'm satisfied
that food of lust renewed consumes my love of food.
Of course, like all self-serving meals, that dish appeals
to reasoning that only seems to happen in my dreams.

I guess that leaves an open field
for cultivating innovation, fifty ways
to leave my breakfast, lunch and dinner,
to stuff my mouth with syllables,
to educate my stomach with a syllabus
that celebrates delayed gratification;
well that's a fortune cookie quest
that can't come soon enough.

This contest is one-sided
so perhaps I should attack it
from behind--assault by purgative.
It's fast or loose and duty-free
but OMG, it turns me
literally
inside out, and twists
my literary output into strands
of hell-bent lineage
that passed a terza rima
as chocolate vermicelli.
After weighing, my conclusion
is that poetry in motions
pushes metaphor to malady;
you kiss it and dismyth it.

The traditional two fingers
may have won the war and peace,
but for me they represent distraction
stimulus-response arousing chemical reaction;
it's appetite-relief that lingers
only to the moment I release
one pleasure for another.
Now the overwhelming urge
to purge is re-invented; panic
launches its offensive, fear of
sudden bloat propels those erstwhile
instruments of pleasure down my throat.

Into overtime, and counting down
in second guesses, wasting time
on waisted dresses, how to cut
those precious stones; but where
is my incentive? I need to fire
a thirst for drought, a flame
that throws me famine, or a god
that will indulge my prayers
when I decide I want to be inventive.

Is there anything I wouldn't give
to win this game, surrender
to a fusion of dead meat and delusion?
A thought, maybe, for someone
who will never dream up
such exotic hunger games.

02/16/2015

Author's Note:

When to stop editing?

Posted on 02/16/2015
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