One Giant Cosmic Joke

I found it hard not to snicker
at feminist bumper stickers
that read “Goddess on the Loose,”
knowing full well that
if there were a God,
He certainly wouldn’t be a woman.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to rethink
what was never clearly thunk at all.
Could I have angered some
half-naked Goddess with a twisted
sense of humor, one who’s decided
to punish past indiscretions?

If so, that could explain
why I’m suddenly more concerned
with how the Chicken Breasts Ala Rivera
are going to taste and reach the table
than how fulsome the buxom young waitress
looks in that short little outfit.

Perhaps it could explain why
hot flashes seemed much funnier
when it wasn’t me waking up
in the middle of the night
in a cold sweat wondering
what new Hell awaits me.

Ultimately, it might even explain
why lately far too many strangers
want to put things inside
my body where
they just plain don’t belong.

3 thoughts on “One Giant Cosmic Joke”

  1. I believe that’s right. And it’s peculiar how many illnesses that strike at the root of a man soon become sexualized or seen in the arena of sex, if only in the observations of them. Man’s mind is one-track, and I’m too stupid to know what women’s minds are.

  2. I can’t say enough about your poetry.

    Please keep writing. Please. This is powerful stuff, so accessible (I don’t like putting it that way, but it’s true) and real and raw.

    A woman I knew in Northampton published a book called ‘The Radiation Sonnets,’ which were composed of a series of sonnets that she began writing (one a night) after her husband was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. The poetry is remarkable, but I was almost more taken with the practice. She said that sometimes here nightly ritual allowed her her feelings.

    I don’t know why I felt compelled to share this. I don’t think you need the healing power of poetry legitimatized.

    But thank you.

  3. This is a _great_ poem Loren.

    I hesitated to say this, knowing that it’s the real you as the focus of the writing, and ‘great’ doesn’t seem proper somehow. But it genuinely is a great poem, so hopefully the intent of the compliment comes through.

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