hungry again. damn it.

Photo by Chad Montano on Unsplash

it always finds me, this hunger, when i least demand it.

when i most desire to be full, i am emptied of substance.

when i am most desired by my life, i am least alive.

there is a whole pantheon of women, men, and gods

outside my room, and i want to be among them;

but hungry, but parched, worn down to this nub of nakedness,

i am hardly the stuff of herculean legend, for if i could lift my arm

and smite even a hobgoblin in a cabbage patch, i could pick that cabbage

and boil it for some sustenance; alas, even the paste-flavored cauliflower

that once disgusted my childish tongue would be to me a plate of kingly

lasagna if i could just get my hands around its bottom.

the cauliflower, the cabbage, the miserly lettuce ball that rots at the bottom

of the grocery store fridge, unwanted: these are the fruits of a dead man’s hunger;

these are the unfindable bounties we seek to discover

when we starve in the shadows of a city teeming with food.