Still Life With Happy Lungs
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Six AM and the dawn can’t quite break.
The morning’s tousled hair is gray.
It rains off and on and you are paralyzed.
Should you chance your Health Nazi decreed 2 miles?
They say it is important to get healthy and die.
In your heart you care not a whit for health
and are properly ill of experts’ opinions.
What your heart desires is two fingers of bourbon
in your coffee and a pack of unfiltered Camels
and sloth, of course, blessedly slow sloth.
You want to slurp that poisoned coffee
and suck down those cancer sticks saying
Fuck You to all the world’s official do-gooders.
The world has become so much smaller.
Little room left for the private soul to romp.
The experts hem you in at every turn.
They always know better and let you know too.
Liberty is just necessary collateral damage.
It’s the good of the many that matters.
And, of course, it’s nothing personal,
(nothing painful ever seems to be).
Alas, those whiskey mornings are now fled,
and those Camels disappeared over the hump.
Moderation is a truly tragic mode of being.
But now it’s raining again and those 2 miles
you don’t have to walk are just a 2 mile
short cut to the death that awaits anyway.
The end that you will face with happy lungs.
If you like this piece, and can afford it, consider donating.
“A penny for the Old Guy?”
