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Heart & Soul
If all my poems seem to end up in the same place it’s because I also want to end up there grateful to God…
Slave stomach said to the
rest of the body “I am King!”
and the general populace of the
body acquiesced worried lest
its bond with the world be
broken without stomach holding
a sovereign position over the
rest of its territories limbs thoughts
dreams desires ambitions successes
at least in this world if not in the
next
So King Stomach sat on a huge corpuscle
throne counting calories and
balancing proteins and carbohydrates like
so many vassals made to
till King Stomach’s fields and bring in
his bounteous harvests
Soon the body’s bond was tighter than
ever with the things of this
world and King Stomach began to
lust after ever greater power
taking over traditional villages and cities with
tacky McDonalds and pre-fab Pizza Huts
everywhere on this good green earth making people
once so sensitive now somewhat fat and lazy
Then one day outside the palace
a procession with an army of angels preceding it
came to the gates asking for an
audience with the king
The angelic army on camels beneficently benign
protecting a palanquin of purest mist
that shielded a greater monarch asking for entrance to the
body’s domain
Queen Ramadan come to request a single favor by the
light of the glowing sliver of the new moon
King Stomach looked out his high turreted window
and quailed in his ten gallon gastronomical boots
for coming to see him was a
reflected radiance so intense it could
dissolve resistance with a
single glance
weakening King Stomach’s hold and
replacing it with a still tasty but less
obsessively bottled-up appetite
The palanquin of mist entered as if swallowing and
Queen Ramadan in all her invisible regalia
faced King Stomach with a moon face of
unutterable beauty
eyelids of bougainvillea landscapes
cheeks of exotic Samarkand roses
lips of Granadan pomegranates with
highlights of oranges from Seville
aromas even greater than the palace
kitchen on feast days and a
delicate embrace the king felt surrounding his
gargantuan but now vulnerable dimensions
He could feel his conquered lands
shrinking before his eyes and the
bondage of multitudes lifting as
Queen Ramadan asked for only
one month a year to maintain her Spartan dominion
which King Stomach falling under her spell
granted in spite of his initial and once deeply
entrenched reluctance
and with his decree now made into law
the whole body prospered to the
utmost extent of its thoughts and limbs
and spiritual latitudes unfolded in
lotus level after glorious level and chrysanthemum
cloud after resplendent cloud and
vegetable step after deep earthly step toward the
high trumpet blasts of a
greater and more delicious
interior Garden of Delights than even
King Stomach in all his
tyrannical pomp
could ever possibly
envision
8/17/11 17 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)
Categories: Poems, Ramadan / 'Eid, Angels