“A trade soon to be automated,

a post that isn’t seen, 

a man like me

a dying breed.”

“Shower,

put on today’s uniform,

drive to the day job

to find another stanza

in another attempt

to get clean,

and that’s just alright 

with me.”

You Should Eat First is titled in a retaliation to the present day’s state of mind and our collective inability to handle the truth.

Have you ever taken vitamins on an empty stomach? No? Well, let me share that you won’t like it. Your body rejects them and they come back up as vomit.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “The strength of a person's spirit [can] be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”

You Should Eat First is a collection of poems taken from personal experience, observations of society, and my struggles with truth as a human in 2019.

Truth, while unchanged through the millennia, is unique to the perception of the individual, but it doesn’t change. However we do once we encounter it.

We need vitamins, sustenance, and truth, but I recommend that You Should Eat First before you read one of these poems.

“Funny ain’t it

that a fictional role

would turn into real life?”

“Pharaoh asked Joe, ‘What’s seven minus seven?’

He said, ‘I don’t know, but I know somebody that knows.’”

“Stress,

only the best realize 

that that is the exact ingredient needed

to pass this test.”