he is
a competitive eater
traveling the country
completing challenges
for free shirts
free meals
and an odd
sort of fame

the steady
progression
from fit to fat
as the videos play on
show a compulsion
becoming
a precipitous decline

yet i cannot
stop watching
as he fills the void
with
eight pound platters
and my own
just grows in scope

we are both
dying incrementally
his by over indulgence
mine through
neglectful disgust
neither of us
fulfilled in the slightest

he keeps traveling
in search of his moby dick
an ahab
with an eating disorder
while i keep writing
a fool
with too much to say

morbidly
as i watch
his caloric descent
into entropic failure
my thumbs compose
an ode
to mutual self-destruction