Poem – Lead Us Not Into (By Lee Marc Stein)

Lead Us Not Into

Never mind young beauties on campus,

glimpses of skin on obscene screens,

the centripetal force of super-fiction —

my siren beckons with perfect diction

from its nook on the refrigerator door.

Drop the tablespoon I self-command

but it appears velcroed to my hand.

I kick myself with each step

across the kitchen. No No, I gasp.

In seconds, though, it’s in my grasp,

that clunky jar of chunky peanut butter.

Just one spoonful, it’ll be my last.

Put the Skippy’s back I demand

but it sits on the counter where I stand.

Another day, another dollop,

and another and another, sweeps into

my fatty face from day to day.

Now I’m choking, please let me live.

Promise I’ll quit this coming May.

Lee Marc Stein

Lee Marc Stein is a retired direct marketing consultant living in East Setauket, New York. His poems have been published in Blast Furnace, Blue & Yellow Dog, Blue Lake Review, Message in a Bottle, Miller’s Pond Poetry, River Poets Journal, Slow Trains Journal, Still Crazy, Subliminal Interiors, Write Place at the Write Time and The Write Room. His first book of poetry, Whispers in the Galleries, features ekphrastic poems.

Lee has had short stories published in Bartleby Snopes, nicollsroad, Write Place at the Write Time, Cynic Online, and Down in the Dirt. He leads workshops at Stony Brook University’s Lifelong Learning program on modern masters of the novel.