Rising in the morning for your daily workout
Your sideburns in curlers
Your hair weave on the nightstand
Take a shower and eat some Tums
Stopping only for a tofu-burger
and a kelp shake
You start your car
As it starts you
The Surgeon General has decided
to make a pointed example out of you,
and so your unlisted home phone number
is E-mailed to Richard Simmons.
You arrive at the gym
and begin your workout.
The personal trainers
Flog you repeatedly with an undercooked spaghetti noodle.
A cry goes up in the gallery
As war is declared on the potentiometer of pestilence
and its evil minions
numbering in the tens of billions
Electronic viruses
and battery-powered pez dispensers
in every corner
their beady eyes scrutinizing you
There are answers in the details
There are snipers on the phone poles
There are IRS agents with microscopes
Camped out in your underwear drawer
Your exercises continue. Unfortunately...
Time changes everything
Time changes nothing
Everything changes itself
As time passes by passively
You'll never lose weight like this,
you tell yourself,
Tofu and bean sprouts and rocks and twigs
Now where'd that damn twinkie get to?
Better check your shorts
That's where you left the last one.
Joan Lunden slugs you with an aluminum bat
Ignore her.
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