Ode to My Belly

My belly proceeds me into every room,
a vanguard, announcing my prescence,
a hairy melon, the fruit of my labors,
my corpulent calling card that I wear
the way a peacock wears his tail.

My belly is territorial. He surveys
the room looking for other bellies
to fight, making sure he is mightiest.
Other bellies hide under ribs and
behind belts in fear. Stains adorn
my belley's face like warpaint. No
food escaping from a fork finds
refuge on the floor; my belly
catches them all. No table contains
him; he pushes them all away.

My belly adores to petted. People
pat him for luck, as they would
pat a statue of the Buddha in a Chinese
restaurant. They gather him in their
hands and scrunch him together the
way people hold the face of a friendly
pit-bull between their hands.
Expectant mothers in their ninth
month approach pressing
their ripeness against mine, asking
for the blessing my belly may bestow.

Lovers rest their heads on my
belly. "Panzon" they murmur. "Corazon"
they sigh and kiss him him in adoration while I read a book. My belly demands
his privacy.

My belly is a cruel taskmaster. He
leads me from the base of my spine,
his grip there is relentless, painful, and
my knrees are crumbling under
his weight. He doesn't know, and
please don't tell him, but I am
contemplating a divorce.

He will be fine. I know he will.
He will meet new people, maybe travel,
maybe buy a sports car. My
worries are for me. Like widows,
like mothers whose children are
grown, like men who've lost their
professions, I wonder...
who will I be on my own?

Each cigarette

Each cigarette is my last one,
the jagged inhale in the morning,
the ending of my day in the evening,
the break for contemplation in the middle
of the day. Each one is my last one.

Why do we do that which harms us?
We smoke, drink, and eat our days.
Maybe we weren’t meant for so much plenty.
Maybe our success is our failure.
Maybe Wilde got it wrong.
Each man doesn’t kill the thing he loves.
Each man is killed by the thing he loves.

Origin of Dust

The origin of dust is a mystery.

No motes float in the sunbeams

spearing through my windows,

no sandstorms rage outside my door,

yet the grey film builds silently

on my books, my shelves, my hats.

Dust is a silent vandal, covering furniture,

then houses, then entire cities.  Dust is

time made visible, permeating everything,

swallowing everything, yet as gradual

as raindrops carrying a mountain

to the sea.  We flail at it with

lemon-scented rags, but still it

comes, falling, slowly, as inevitable

as our own deaths. Even then, we don’t escape

the dust. We become one with it, and in turn,

land on some future window or door,

shouting a mute warning,

dismissed with the flick of a feather,

yet always, oh always, returning.

Heed the dust, my friends, and remember,

what we wipe away today,

is what we become tomorrow.