Fred Aiken Writing

reading poetry while taking a crap

is the weirdest experience,

since you’re trying to engage with some greater truth,

or perhaps marveling at beautiful words on a page,

while pushing the contents of your colon out of your body,

realizing that eating Taco Bell for the fifth night

in a row

wasn’t the best decision,

definitely not the healthiest nutritional choice,

but to get on a diet, 

like eat carrots or some shit,

would be a lot worse,

perhaps the worst decision ever made,

because keeping to that diet, well,

I know I would never be able to keep to it,

but the alternative is to forever be glued 

to a porcelain seat while searching for meaning

in poetry read to pass the time

if a detective only solved suicides,

then they’d never get the wrong suspect