The Unrelenting Scale
so much depends
upon
the callous silver
scale
lying about my
virtues
every effing
Tuesday.
Everyone…It’s… weigh-in day! And since you’ve all been so pleasant about my hysterical rantings each week, I’ve decided to recognize that another week has bitten the dust and celebrate National Poetry Month all at once! A special thanks to one of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams, whose fine work has made it easy to express my dissatisfaction with being a member and victim of a numbers fixated society. Er, or something like that.
Actually, the piece above — the poem, not the wide butt — is a salute to his truly remarkable ability to create poetry that is approachable, and based on very ordinary things, like the poem he really wrote, The Red Wheelbarrow, which I modeled mine after. Williams was thrifty and practical with his words, providing a structure that allows me to continue to express irritation at my circumference circumstances this morning on the scale by emulating This is Just To Say, another of my favorites, as a rationale for my pounds pain.
I barely tasted
the Red Velvet Cake
I made
this weekend
and which
you are probably
wishing
you could have
Forgive me
it was obscene
so dense
and so red
But the real reason my weight loss may have slowed down a bit is because I’m not exercising enough. Three days of schlepping through the neighborhood instead of seven isn’t cutting it. I did trudge step lightly up and down my stairs 60 times yesterday, however. The good news is I can actually walk today.
But, there is also the possibility that the scale is a blatant liar. It seems according to Renee Cloe, ACE Certified Personal Trainer in this source that not enough water, too much salt, water-retention before menstruation, and not taking into consideration that the enormous hamburger I inhaled a modest handful of nuts actually weighs something in our tummies. Oh, and glycogen.
Evidently, when glycogen is stored in the liver, it actually weighs something AND packages itself with water, which also weighs something. Hence, the evil scale registers that weight. The big news from this is if I don’t eat enough carbs — yes, CARBS — then my appetite can increase, along with more glycogen storage. But none of this is actually about gaining weight. Is that good news?
Can someone weigh my head please? Surely, all this information has added some poundage. Forget it. I’ll just go on my walk today and later, take Charles Baudelaire’s crapulent advice that follows — on the virtue and poetry, of course.
Get Drunk
Always be drunk.
That’s it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time’s horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
“Time to get drunk! Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!”
Oh, and Happy National Poetry Month. Cheers!
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