The Love My Body Never Got

i’m

ashamed

a fat guy

wondering what

if for one minute

i just pretended to

love my body how it is

that’s not how a man’s supposed to look

try to read not eat a health food book

my

brothers’

ludicrous

epithets still

echo in my mind

lard-ass lazy cow or

fatty-fatty-two-by-four

couldn’t fit through the bathroom door

lean mean scrappy guys tough guys are cool

in movies fat guys are funny 

why aren’t you

all 

day long

every day

the same abuse

but so ingrained now

no siblings are required

the shame keeps me locked inside

i hate the thought of being seen

hey fatty hop on a treadmill

shouts some kid in a passing car

but

what if

i have the

gall to say i

love my jiggling ass

my thick runner’s thighs now

soft but no less powerful

my swollen stomach like a hill

found beautiful in some cultures just

not ours which would also shame me for these

tits that i try so hard to hide but laughing

hold and shake mirthfully in the mirror this once

like a holy holiday of self-acceptance and

love my body never got though it’s all i’ll ever have

Scary Personal Writing

Hi everybody.

Since I usually write a poem a day, my poems tend to be a bit shorter as a result of the time constraint, but today I started one that I want to work into something longer. I am about halfway through it now.

The poem I'm working on is intensely personal, and airs some things about myself I struggle with daily as an overweight, atypical man. It's my body. I'm working to change it, but I'm stuck with what I've got while I take the long journey toward making it something I can more comfortably inhabit. Accepting it for what it is in the face of fear of judgment is one thing I haven't allowed myself to do, and that's been the source of a lot of self-loathing and isolation.

I also know I'm not the only with these struggles.

It's partly due to my work with the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron that I'm finding the courage to write this poem at all. I don't want to dwell on it and drag it out, but it's something more than just one day of writing can satisfy. You'll have it tomorrow night.

Thanks so very much for reading.

Be good to each other.

~Bacchus