The Shape I Am In

Well, it's been a long haul, and I am sorry to have been so long away. But honestly I couldn't figure out to get back into this blog. But now I have finally managed it and I come skidding back in with my New Year resolutions just prior to my fifty-eighth birthday (this coming Tuesday, January 10. . . Happy Birthday to me! ).

The first of the poems below was written for a challenge at Wild Poetry Forum and was not occasioned by my birthday (liar! liar!). . . I wrote the poem in October after returning from attending the Jack the Ripper conference in Brighton, England. In the poem I liken myself to Ariel Sharon in terms of size. Following Mr. Sharon's unfortunate massive stroke of the past few days, I have written a couple of poems since announcing my New Year resolutions to give up beer and Kit Kats -- [A sidelight for Ripperologists... the rotund man who inspired the poem is not Sharon but author and D'Onstonite, Ivor Edwards, seen in the bar of the Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton]

The Shape I Am In

It's my birthday... fifty seven today,
and in a pub a man floats by with a pint of beer.
I construe him as tubby Ariel Sharon drifting
over porpoised carpet, as Sharon hovers blimp-like
over the mosaicked, jigsawed Mideast. But with despair
I realize I am the tub shape of Sharon -- reject
workout for one more lager at the bar rail,
more munchies. Where is that thin young man
who sailed to Nixon's America,
paddy fields with napalm or Canadian sanctuary
-- I didn't get drafted, lottery no. 315
of 365. But heard of another Liverpool boy,
a non-citizen who died in Vietnam,
could have been me, tear gas and blood
at Kent State in Neil Young's lyrics--
"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio."
Ah, but luckily at fifty seven
(all those Heinz varieties of me!)
I can sail above it all,
rolling in the stratosphere
like Ariel Sharon.

************

No Belly Laugh for Me

No, ma'am, now that
I've given up beer,
y'all cain't call me
Mr Beergut no more.

I'm a lean machine,
venting my spleen
at the couch potatoes,
those spare tire folks.

I WILL be thin; I WILL
get in those duds I never
could before -- now I
have given up the suds.

************

No Kit Kats

on the train going home
from D.C. to Baltimore, MD:
no treats to munch between
the Anacostia and Seabrook.

In the poem I wrote, published
of late in Words-Myth,
aptly titled "The Shape I Am In,"
I blithely compared myself

to tubby Ariel Sharon,
testimony to my flab -- but
now Ariel lies near death
in a Jerusalem hospital;

blood flooded his brain
after a second stroke
brought on no doubt
by his undue obesity--

I remember the April photograph
of Bush greeting Sharon
in Crawford, after the overweight
Israeli hauled from a limo:

our slim leader accompanied
by his black Scottie
grasping the meaty paw
of the rotund P.M.

What a salutary lesson as I pray
for Sharon's recovery and
continue my fast, slimming
down into the New Year.

Christopher T. George