Dieting for Death

An obese man, no kinder word for it,
is thinking about committing suicide
while eating chips and surfing the internet:
BANG (unheard)! 
                           A floor. A gurney ride.

Toe-tagged on a metal table.  Knives,
needles, forceps, bone-saws. And  the cut
a masked pathologist would painlessly incise
across the contours of his mountainous gut.

So he resolves to lose a little weight
and diet for death as you and I might do
for summer: gives up meat entirely, eats
broccoli, cottage cheese and soy burgoo.

Now home from hell, a second, trim Ulysses,
his friends and lovers shower him with kisses.