That’ll Do

You can walk down the road and shed
all of your possessions and what are you left with
but the body you began with?

This bloated, beaten, living corpse
whose actions you can only claim part responsibility,
Like a defective toy that you can’t ship back to China.
Like the crown moulding in the off-white you didn’t order.

There is nothing neither you nor I can do about how you or I look,
nothing we can do to repair the mistakes that have
so carelessly been tossed on us,
nothing we can do except pray and hope,
(In spite of our educated reformation from the church
though, like my mother says, there are no atheists in foxholes)
that one day somebody will look at us and say,
“That’ll do.”

Because that’s what life is, isn’t it?
Just a pissing contest with our possessions;
though no matter how hard we try
we are locked in this
one
big
Problem.

It’s the one thing you can’t hide,
the one thing that everyone can judge you over,
the one burden that will follow you until you die,
your face,
your body,
your legs,
your fat,
you’re fat,
that everyone looks at. Everyone
has an opinion over who you are.

Intellectual property means nothing.
Our physical possessions are all we have.
“That’ll do.”