Emotive Twenty-Somethings ...

This morning, while looking through old files on a long-forgotten flash drive, I found a poem I wrote during my senior year of college. Thinking back, it seems like I used to write a lot of silly things like this. Up 'til now I've rarely shared them with anyone ... but this one was too good to pass up. I mean, what was I thinking? How bored must I have been to even start, much less finish, something so inane? Oh, well. Nothing can keep an emotive twenty-three year old down ;)

Still, given my last entry and the upcoming fun & food-filled holiday season, this poem* may even be slightly apropo. Cheers to ya'll, and good luck keeping those upcoming New Year's Resolutions.

* WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POEM MAY CONTAIN NUDITY

“Weighed Again, Come January”

Mid-January, I stood in the shower and realized
I couldn’t see my feet without moving my head forward
(more than I care to admit).
Only with effort could I make out what lay beyond
the titan mound of all too solid flesh.

I stood stark naked as water trickled down a drain
(to be reused by others in a perverse, yet telling,
cycle of modernity), and thought how easy corpulence would
melt away
in the sweat of a rubber-padded weight room.

And so I came to the meat auction
where scores of ruddy-faced men and women
whored themselves in public spectacle. (The world of weights
revolves around breasts and biceps).
But I was not so degenerate.
Or rather, I was (am) but didn’t (don’t) have the right figure.
So, I wore baggy sweats.

An acrid smell drifted across the checkered floor
and I nearly left because I couldn’t stand to breathe in the mix of five-year old sweat and hairspray.
But looking down I saw nothing
but my Dionysian stomach and so ...

Weight machines stood in a row like a collection of
sculpted scrap metal that once may have composed the guts of a Chevy or a washing machine. The machines were foreign,
their magic made more potent by mystery
and the Alchemic ability to transform fat into figure.

I stepped to a machine as music blared inanely across the room.
“Dirty deeds done dirt cheap ... ”
And I remembered why the progression of time
is such a good idea. (Good one, God).

Others in the room moved like large, shapely specters,
seemingly unaware of the rest of the room, but secretly staring
and lusting. “Dude, throw thirty more on,”
the blue-shirted shape said;
perhaps meant to entice the girl with the butterfly tattoo.

The hour passed and gravity took its toll. I straggled home,
legs tense and arms quivering.
Even in this frozen wasteland, my body found a way to sweat. (Thanks again, God).

In the apartment, I stripped down and stepped into the shower, consumed by Promethean pain.
And as the water spilled out, I looked down and smiled weakly.

I still couldn’t see my feet.