Lament of the Obese Wraith

Now that I'm dead I need more exercise.
Death strips you thin, they say, but they're dead wrong.
I roam back alleys, heavy with regret.

In my day men loved my supple lies,
my breasts like loaves of bread, my promises.
Wise men thought twice and gave me up for Lent.

Now I buckle sidewalks with my thighs,
trigger earthquakes, stagger like Queen Kong,
half her height and twice as corpulent.

An irate priest once tried to exorcise
my bloated presence from his parish yard.
I stuck in his gate 'til winter was half spent.

Greed transcends the grave, entices flies,
distends the ego, basks in disregard.
I haunt dark corridors, fat and out of breath.

Awkward Moment

I tasted infinity in my wife's meat loaf
but was afraid to tell her as she's a
sensitive cook

and besides we had guests.

So I swallowed hard and asked,

to no one in particular,
"What single-syllable sound would you choose
for your epiphany?"

to which my wife replied,

"You're just asking that

because you don't like the meat loaf."

"I don't much care for infinity," I confessed.

"Makes me feel negligible,"

to which all our guests applauded.

"But you are insignificant," said my wife.

"We all are, in the great grand scope of

eternity. In six billion years,

what will it matter?"

We all grew quiet and stared

into our napkins.

"I have an answer to your question,"

said my wife:

"∞"

Yow

YOW! Bit hard
the inside of my mouth.
Why the hell does this happen every time I write a poem?
Chewing away on the
rubbery gristle of
undigestable thoughts
I've inadvertantly devoured
the inside corner of my lip.
Poetry should never be
this hard.

Nein One One

[The random words I used for this poem are in bold type]

I was a shy and guarded young bank exec
burning out my esophagus on breath mints and Marlboros
with little reverence for those not upwardly bound.

Each morning I downed two scrambled eggs,

three tabs of Concerta with high octane Starbucks

to keep distraction at bay,

commuted to work absorbed in audio books

on motivation, risk, and investment,

trusting fully in the omniscience

of finance gurus

and their high-stakes investment advice

until that cold morning when two wild geese

crashed into my office tower

and the resulting explosions that did not occur

reminded me of my unfinished life

and the irreversible damage i might not inflict

upon the precious and fragile world.

Dream While Driving

I fell asleep again today, this time while driving.
I dreamed I was awake, and driving
on the very same freeway
on the very same day
and every driver in every other car
knew me and waved as they passed.
Some honked their horns and smiled.
Small children pressed their faces against the windows
and gestured wildly.
It felt good to be known and recognized.
Everyone drove safely,
and gave me lots of room.
I did not recognize a single man, woman, or child
though they seemed to know me very well.
I wondered - had I known them in some other life?

A taxi driver wearing a turban
rolled down his window
and motioned for me to exit.
I pulled off at the next freeway offramp.
I found a place to pull over beside
a field of golden barley.
I waited for him to come to my window.
It took a while, for he had but one leg
and he had to walk with crutches.
"Do you remember me?" he exclaimed,
smiling broadly but with tears in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said, "I don't remember you at all."
"I am Mansi, your son in law," he said.
"I married your daughter."
"I don't have a daughter," I said.
"Your daughter Gloria, with the beautiful voice."
"I'm sorry," I said, "I don't remember a thing."
"It's okay," he said. "Remembering
isn't everything."
He embraced me then and I woke up.

I was still driving, but on an unfamiliar highway
that seemed to stretch on forever
between foggy rice fields
without another car or farmhouse in sight
and no way to remember
from where I had come from
or where I was going.

A Mountain of Shit

1. I was sitting in Starbucks staring into my Espresso Macchiato and thinking about the fecal matter stuck to the bottom of my shoe when it occurred to me that dog crap is only metaphor for real shit.

2. Real shit is the wealthy business man who purchases a first class ticket to Cambodia in order to rape a ten-year-old enslaved in a brothel from which there is no escape.

3. Real shit is the mountain of refuse on the outskirts of Manila that regularly avalanches down to bury the children skipping rope below.

4. Real shit "happens" all right, but lets not diminish that truth with a dumb shit sticker tacked onto the bumper of a chunk of metal spewing real shit into the life-sustaining air we breathe.

5. Real shit "happens" because we allow it, dispense it, toss it, fan it, eat it, smoke it, sling it, and imagine it into existence.

6. Real shit begins when the sperm of greed meets the ovum of dark fantasy and births naked carefree indulgence.

7. It's not what a human ingests and which later drops into the latrine that equals real shit, said the Rabbi; it's what oozes from the dark corners of the human heart that stinks up the world.

8. Hitler's real name was Adolph Shitler. Mao's real name was Mao Tse Dung. Stalin's real name was Joseph Shitionovich Stalin, otherwise known as Little Shit. But despite their atrocities, let us not think that we are less capable.

9. Real shit is the 10 acres of tin foil manufactured each day to wrap eighty million Hersheys Kisses made of chocolate originating, by the way, from the Ivory Coast cocoa farms where child slaves work 100 hours a week making us happy on Valentine's Day.

10. We are shit athiests refusing to acknowledge the existence of shit we can't see. Which is why the plastic pebbles swirling in the Pacific now cover Hawaiian beaches and catch in the throats of gulls and crabs but don't really bother us much.

11. Real shit isn't the dog feces on the bottom of the shoe. Real shit is the shoe on the top of the dog feces made of materials that won't decompose any time soon.

12. Real shit is the plastic straw and styrofoam cup into which I stare in my daily Starbucks ritual.

13. But then again, who really gives a shit.

Sam's Window

I drove all afternoon to see my friend.
I’d never known a more trustworthy man.
Sam lived above his aging mom and dad
In an attic room he’d shaped with his own hands.

His room was spare – a kind of hermitage
With creaking varnished floorboards laid with care,
A bed, a desk, a large Greek lexicon
So he could study scriptures after dark

After tucking both his parents in.
At 45 he’d never asked for more.
And laid out in the middle of the floor:
A giant pane of inch-thick window glass

Through which he viewed the living room below,
The fading sofa, TV, easy chairs,
Where his parents sometimes spent all night.
“This way I can make sure they haven’t fallen.

As for the glass, I ordered it last year
For a contractor who never picked it up.
It took six men to haul it up the stairs
and lay it in this custom frame I cut.

It does the trick. I spied Pop fallen once
and Mom too weak to help him back to bed.
There’s no way I could let them live alone
or in some wretched convalescent shed.”

We sat in silence. The long room smelled of pine.
I asked him if the glass was safe enough.
He broke into his first grin of the night.
“Watch this,” he said, and switched the room lamp off.

The large glass seemed to vanish in the dark.
Where it had rested now gaped a great hole.
I suddenly felt dizzy looking down
Into the glowing room twelve feet below

And just as I drew back, Sam took a leap
High above the hole with a yelp.
I cried for him to stop, but then – too late –
All six-foot-three of him flew through the dark,

A silhouetted shape of outstretched limbs
Heading straight for sure catastrophe.
But then he landed on what seemed thin air
That seemed to give a bit, but held him firm.

My mind knew what had caught him. Nonetheless,
he stood there flaunting the miraculous,
like Christ atop the waves of Galilee
as Peter gaped in incredulity.