My Body
Ben Gross
My body is a temple
But no Roman nor Babylonian
Could desecrate it more than I do.
I am sculpted like Ionian marble
And the light and shadow dance
Around my muscles in sacred motion
That makes my reflected form radiate
An enviable, swollen perfection.
But I sack this temple,
Profane this shrine
With the very thing that gives me life.
If only I were truly marble
Or bronze
And could live forever in static consummation.
But I must age and I must eat.
I feel fat congeal around my calcified bones
And death creep along my spine.
The first conspiring with the second,
Till my worn and bloated body
Finds the fate of every once immaculate temple:
A heap of forgotten, despised rubble
And food for the worms
Who eat with a joyful, reckless abandon.