The Want Monster

Christmas, 2004 / No. 13

I was a kid like any other.

There was a monster

under my bed, except

as I got older,

it started sleeping in

my bed, and ever since,

I’ve been trying

to tame it, teach it, telling it:

“Don’t be greedy, desperate, needy!”

“Don’t eat that, buy that, fuck that!”

But it would not listen.

So I chained it in the basement

and put it on a diet

of bread, water, and Family Circus comics

until I thought it was finally broken.

But all along it was just playing

dead and saving up its strength, because

today, when I sat thinking coolly,

calmly of you, up it rose, crushing

my ceilings and walls with its bursting

breasts and itchy hips and headed straight

for you, the one it wants more

than it’s ever wanted anything

before. But don’t worry, I

may be scared of it, but you

are what the want monster wants,

and so the want monster is scared of you.