Biochemically Speaking, People Are Close Relatives of Soy

Soy beans lack perky breasts, it's true.
They never sue for damages, don't grow
mustaches, and can't tell jokes to save

their round green lives. At the amino acid level,
though, they're Giuseppe to our Joe.
You say I don't know beans? Okay—

did you prove E equals mc² personally?
Can you be sure the glitter-on-black-velvet
stars are actually light-years away?

Don't get me started on the Eucharist,
or who killed Kennedy. Some imposter may
have written this to blame it on a Charles

Harper Webb who doesn't exist.
That I "think" in no way proves I "am,"
Reader—if you "are," which book sales

make me doubt. The one who told me
about soy was beautiful and bright.
She swore she loved me. Doesn't that

justify faith? Isn't belief-sans-proof
my American right? My junk-mail may
hold gifts worth millions. The World

Series may be played inside my TV.
Last night's dream that I was paid 100 K
to create a language, Franz, for paranoids,

could be prophetic. Ghosts may live
in old toupees. I believe spring peepers'
summer songs were sent by God

because He liked watching my family,
and in green fields not far away,
our soy bean cousins get a good night's sleep.

Copyright © 2006 Charles Harper Webb All rights reserved
from Birmingham Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission