Suffer the Shriveled of Spirit to Curse at You
         

Does not the world—that fat lout—
                    stomp on their corns, hard?
Do they not starve for sweets
          that, eaten, stab their cavities?

Let them aouga as you make
                    a legal left. Let them howl
as you drop the last on-sale
          angelfood cake into your cart

just as they run up, slobbering.
                    Don't resent their scowls
when you ask, all courtesy, to use
          the lat machine they lounge around,

grousing with other curdled
                    hearts they think are friends.
Why shout back when, in the library,
          they denounce a printer

that, for all others, works fine?
                    Didn't their hopes take
a crippling fall? Aren't they dropsical
          with lack of love, guts bursting

with the winds of "Why not me?"
                    Never think—even if they seem
to prosper—they don't writhe in psychic
          hovels, begging-cups replete

with holes. Never think their limbs
                    don't shake, muscles crow-barred
off their bones by useless efforts
          to pump up their punctured pride.

Decline to provide the whack-
                    across-the-face Justice declares
their due. Be sure—as you despise
          their jowls, and the cankered

holes from which they spray I
                    spout I spew-that even
on your worst day, they don't resemble
          you.

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Copyright © 2016 Charles Harper Webb All rights reserved
from Green Mountains Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission