The inner being is a muddy mess
Of desires one seems to have eaten
Like hash or like mud
It’s as if I’ve eaten mud

Hash is really the better analogy
Since mud is a simple mixture of dirt and water
While hash combines several ingredients
As they used to say in the Anacin commercial

But hash is after all a nutritive substance
While the stuff in my current gut
Continuously asserts
Its indigestibility

An American president
Once claimed to follow his gut
As if that vessel of contraries
Could serve as any sort of guide

And I can come up with no metaphor
Of a meal whose courses
Have taken up arms
Against each other

The desire to be normal
Which is really the desire to be accepted
To play second base once in awhile
Rather than right field where the ball rarely flies

Fights with the arrogant dismissal
Of others as conformist weasels
Living in fear of losing
Their precious positions

Which in turn fights with the rational desire
To acknowledge at the very least
The differences among people
If not the worth they themselves so often conceal

Which in turn fights with irrational rage
That people treat people themselves not least
Like shit
That emerges after so many twists and turns

I have in me a gut full of shit
Like any creature with an alimentary canal
But it does seem a peculiar load
For a gut to be conscious of itself