THE HOUSE OF CONSTIPATION

The fridge sat fat and stuffed and dirty

In the kitchen where its door swung wide

Where food excesses often started

With a swinging, revolving, revolting

Door of bad eating habits

In a house of dust and grime

That clings to window blinds

Or pools in places barely traipsed

Like pooling oceans,

Dustball oceans

In that house bereft of ventilation

Known as the House of Constipation

Where tables are for piles of things

And things take up the walking space

Where clutter abounds from wall to corner

Impeding movement of mind and matter

Where cabinets are filled with things not used

To displace the space left for those things used

In a kitchen waiting room for dying foods –

Yet where foods don’t die, but mummify

In a graveyard filled with left-behinds

Of left-overs put in fridge, or on countertops

Where heels of bread forever sit

Imprisoned in their plastic bags

Or end in a fridge of small plastic coffins

Filled with rotting bits and morsels

Dried or slimy, and growing putrid

All food just molds and wastes away

For the hang-up of a silly rule

Known as “waste not, want not.”

Yet stay it does on the morgue-like shelf

In this self-deluded monstrous way

A “sin avoiding sin”

While awash in fat-laden sugar goodies

Which tower over all food groups

In cellulite-producing, artery-clog

Shaming wholesome food

It shames these eaters too

Who live in this house

Who don’t eat right

Who snuff out life in this constipated house

Just as they would to the body temple.

January 3, 1995

Chevy Chase, MD