Eating Up Time
by Charles Kesler


I am eating up time
as if it were French silk pie.

This morning has been a lousy father
and an even worse mother.

This morning
I hate my belly,

but I keep eating French silk pie
bite by bite.

One slice should be
enough,

but I stab shoulds
with a King size fork.

Whoever heard of chocolate suicide?
Ask a million large ladies and gentlemen,

or me, a thin man, Woody Allenish,
in civil war with self.

I join their eating campaign
like General Sherman plowing through

Georgia, which brings me back
to my father, and his home state.

The last thing he ate
was French silk pie.






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