They plant wooden wedges between my jaws
to keep my mouth from closing. Then a cement
ramp is laid, leading up to my massive chin.
Savagely roaring,
I lay into it
ripping and tearing
into my environment,
biting and chewing
clutching and rending
eating and drinking
swallowing and shitting.
I am a mouth
connected to an asshole,
an O
which tries to confine eternity
within its perimeter.
I am a death and a cancer. I am industry.
Caricature:
I am the Tasmanian
Devil
waiting for Bugs Bunny
to put me under.
I dwell among those below, the infernal hordes
gorging on grapes
swilling in excrement,
bellowing
beneath the sore weight of my omnipotent
all-consuming hunger.
Sometimes I turn
green with nausea and
my digestive track want to
separate from my palate and escape
from the never-ending river of food, unchewed
and indigestible, rupturing my digestive track,
spewing inexorable streams, defecating and vomiting
simultaneously.
(They deny it, but I know
the vomit is shoveled
back into my mouth, and
I should not be surprised
I do not want to eat,
about the feces.)
but imaginary starvation drives me on.
I burn inside, and if I rest this fire
shrieks, lashing out to feed upon
my very body.
Avoid the trees of Ceres’ groves,
refuse her alluring bounty.
Fighting your way out of these enticing
coils which will consume you as surely
as I will consume you if you stand too close
to my gnashing teeth.
To whose benefit,
that I should turn the Earth
to excrement, and turn my bowels
to cancer?
Who’s to benefit
once the world has been consumed
and we must live on refuse?
Whose benefit,
wishing to see the world reduced
to a pigpen and mankind to hogs?
I shall refuse to eat. Hie myself
to the highest tower of this tall palace
and throw myself out, plunging to release.
Peace to the world.
But, even if I could lift my body
up the endless flights of stairs, never
could I find a window wide enough to fit through.
Fuck my face, let me mouth
your rose petal lips--lubricious folds-
-and drink your whormoanal juices;
careful I don’t forget myself and
mistake your flower for food,
devouring your desires, love, everything
that crosses my path.
I shall eat this world and make it cry,
if not from pleasure, then from pain.
Forgive, relax, forget, expectorate.
They catch us young, an easy mark,
a captive audience, an open market.
Handing me the axe, they pointed to the tree;
I cannot tell a lie.
Watersnakes undulate in the quiet pool.
Drain the pond and dredge its bed,
clear the feeding springs
that they may flow unimpeded.
Fish and oysters,
deep water delicacies;
let the fishermen
fill their nets for me.
Rather would I share in Midas’ curse;
his petty greed preferable to my gross gluttony.
Find me the cornucopia. I shall
empty it
and eat the shell
before it is replenished.
Ceres shall pay dearly for her dreadful curse.
I am death.
The convict, sentenced to execution,
is laid upon my table,
and all who grow weary of life
hunger for me
as I hunger for them.
Rest, my mind.
Thought provokes desire.
Meditate on peaceful pastures.
Clover, heather and coltsfoot stir in the slight breeze.
Bees navigate from flower to flower,
leaving no stamen unstroked, no nectar unsipped.
Furrow-weaving mice carry seed to their nests
while timid rabbits nip tender young shoots.
Overhead a flying cardinal laughs
at the cornfield crows who see not the farmer’s approach.
Far above floats a cloud rich with rain,
dropping spring showers to wash and bless the land.
Rabbits and mice, bearing under, continue to feed and hoard.
The crows take to wing as the farmer aims his shotgun
and fires, dropping one, two, tree while the others flee.
Water cannot stop the fire which rages across this land,
devouring everything: corn, clover, rodents and farmers,
leaving only sterile scorched soil to mark its passing.
Inextinguishable, all-consuming fire,
burning until, nothing left for fuel,
it chokes upon its own flames.
Have this carved on my tombstone
(if there are any stonecarvers left):
I am the life-consuming flame.
Here come the poor to beg for food,
and the novices wishing to learn the secret
of my insatiable hunger,
as if the world could feed more than one
Erysichthon.
It is not right, I cannot share.
Let children starve in Africa, that I might
stuff my face.
I bear this curse for all.
They fear me, who harvest my fields and orchards;
fearing if they eat one ear of corn, one apple,
they must make up for the loss with the meat
of their own bodies.
Why should I care if this world dies of rape?
so long as I have extracted all its treasure.
My riches lie safely vaulted
in the first
national bank of Erysichthon.
If the Earth passes from us
won’t that give
my riches added worth?
Malthus, my mentor, knew the naked truth.
I adopt his standard: there is not enough
for everyone, there is only enough for me.
I name a day of feasting in his honor,
a rich person’s holiday, long kept secret from common folk.
All pious millionaires bow their head at his name.
I must have food for Malthus’ day.
Opening wide my bowels
I shat
a steaming mountain,
the odor of which drew
Beelzebub and
his host of flies
to feed and breed
in the land
of my offal.
There is no pit
deep enough
for my latrine,
no sewage plant
large enough
to process my wastes.
My palace sits on a cliff
overlooking
the ocean.
My excrement is carted to the cliff edge
and dumped into
the salt water
where it can be scattered
and absorbed
by the fecal seas.
The ocean is my toilet bowl,
how quickly
the water yellows and browns.
The fish choke their shit-clogged gills,
the seabirds
fly inland to escape the smell.
It was such an effort
to carry me
from table to toilet,
while the sojourn
would only augment
my hunger.
So I had a toilet
built into my
sturdy dinner seat.
My shit is loaded
into wagons
and dumped into the ocean.
Some is mixed with peat moss
to feed the
earth I feed upon.
I shit so much
that it tends
to get out of hand,
dirtying my habitat,
fouling up the
palace.
And sometimes
I take feces
in hand
like Swift’s Yahoos,
tossing it about
in mad fits,
on floors, on walls,
on paintings,
on tables, on faces.
It
stings quick, nettles thick, flies sharp, strikes
deep into the heart driving, impelling, snatching
the breath with desire, blind desire, to eat
the Earth and drink the Sun, to take all matter
all existence within myself making it a part
of me that it might die and cease to exist, I want
what I want is to be God, to be God and
possess the Earth or to rape the Earth
and kill God my mine I am possessive but
truly I am the greatest sensualist tasting
feeling seeing hearing smelling, I have a baby’s
senses unleashed of arbitrary conventions I must
engage my senses.
Pheasant
under
glass.
Succulent
roast
pork.
Baked
white
fish.
Fried
frog
legs.
Fresh
turtle
soup.
Take my family from the palace
Deviled
and abandon the town before
stuffed
my appetite overwhelms me.
mushrooms.
Tie me to the chair and gag me,
Fried
that I may not lure
breaded
them with my cries.
clams.
I shall not be bound long,
Curried
I shall bite through the gag
rice and
and eat it.
vegetables.
If they will not leave me
Flaming
then take them by force,
baked
but get them gone.
Alaska.
Leave me to my hunger;
Potatoes
let the monster
au
meet its own end.
gratin.
The world cannot go on
Pickled
toiling and sacrificing
pigs
to feed me.
feet.
Go,and take everything;
Caviar
destroy what food you leave behind
and
and burn the crops green on their stalks.
escargot.
Strip the land within
Corn
the radius of a week’s
on the
walking.
cob.
Leave nothing to feed my appetite,
Salmon,
nothing which could delay the inevitable
trout,
confrontation between man and his desires.
flounder,
I shall undergo writhing fits,
chicken,
chewing the woodwork,
duck,
eating the crockery,
turkey,
licking the dust off the shelves,
screaming as I dash my head
ham,
against the cobblestones.
steak,
Tasting the blood
mutton,
dripping down from my pate,
I shall even conceive
asparagus,
a fatal hunger for myself.
carrots,
cabbage,
peaches,
pineapple,
watermelon.
Talking, I waste my time
chewing air. Bring me food!
Food.