I asked him why he did this;
surely it was unsanitary?
Surely his hair smelled a mess?
He told me that, well, he’d done it for years
and he was still alive
and had never received any complaints about his smell
and besides,
shit yielded to him better than feathers ever had.

I once looked inside the pillowcase
and I saw a rich, creamy chocolate,
but this was by no means what I smelled,
so when he reached in to take his lunch,
I declined the pillowcase offering.

I did not want to taste his shit
because I did not like the smell of his shit
I did not like the smell of his shit
because I had been conditioned by society to
instinctively shun shit
and so I declined.

But what if coprophagy is the answer
to all the world’s difficulties?
Hunger, poverty, what if
these are the result of
predation
and we, like plants,
are capable of a certain photosynthesis
auto-coprophagy
and our society would be self-sustaining
if we ate our own shit?

Unless the few
with shit-packed pillowcases
come out of the closet
and revolutionize our dietary habits,
the world will continue to starve.