Cacoethes as infatuation
visited me mostly in my youth.
Those deep yearnings fed my soul
with the lyrics of melancholy love songs
that revolved on my record player’s
turntable as I, in my callow days,
lay in bed drowning in my fantasies
of unobtainable desires.
Cacoethes as cravings
found me also as the obsessions
that were literally fed me as food.
Too easily was I led
by edible longings -
but I was not feeding real hunger.
Rather – I was hungering
to feed an empty heart.
Eventually I learned to control
my cravings for the sweet and the salty,
and old longings of infatuation
long ago fled from me.
Any void I feel today
I fill with cacoethe substitutes
mostly harmless and rarely unhealthful
as I move my pen again and again
over paper.
Walmart’s river—
A cascade of unhealthful kisses:
Hold hands, unfolded anger.
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