I dreamed I was Achilles
picnicking on the shore,
eating flank and shank
of barbecued boar,
and singing to the immortal gods:

“I give to you what’s already yours:
the fat, the gristle, the red pick-up truck,
the girlfriend, the apartment
and the golden retriever pups!”

Unlike Achilles, my sin is sloth,
which seems in me a gluttonous fear
of not getting enough
of what I want, but I get enough
of what I need: a meal, a bed, a roof,

the occasional blowjob,
and when my back goes out
a script of hydrocodone:
sweet, oblong and white as bone.

This sloth I think is distilled from rage
that lay impotent in a vinyl-sided cage,
like Franz Kafka’s wan hunger artist
or Nabakov’s ape,
burning its image on every page
of my life’s idle manuscript.