the man with the sock tattoos

it all began with a lazy man,
who on his least lazy day was certainly more
lazy
than you or i,
and on one especially lazy day,
this rotund sloth
sat in his own filth one late afternoon,
after not showering for days,
with crumbs crusted in his chest hair & the
stench of stale beer flowing from his mouth
every time he opened it to yawn

this man focused on all the domestic
errands that he needed to make in a day
(every single one which made him heave his immense
disgusting body &
try to catch his breath while sweating out the
alcohol through his
pores),
from taking a piss to making something to eat
(which he never did, if in fact he could waddle to the
phone, call and order some food to be brought to
him),
and he found himself sitting in his stained recliner,
staring at his yellow-toed bare feet

as the feet seemed to stare back at him,
his mind drifted to all the time he spent finding socks to
wear, as well as the
time he invested in pulling them over his feet &
it angered him,
knowing that he would never get those moments back---
he wondered just what he could have accomplished,
from stuffing his fat face to watching whole seasons of canceled
programming---
so he came up with a solution

he put on his unlaced old sneakers without socks &
picked up all of his socks that were dirty,
including all those on the floors in his prospective rooms,
then
he went outside behind his apartment building and set fire to all those
socks that he had nestled in a large smelly pile---
the stench lingered down his street
this sloth had a buddy who did tats,
he lived in the neighborhood,
and so to the tat-man went the sloth---
sooner than later he was sitting in a recliner there
being asked by his equally fat & disgusting
(but beautifully tattooed) friend,
just what exactly it was that he wanted done &
where

the sloth in question replied
“give me a pair of white hanes cushioned crews,
one for the left & one for the right”---then
he raised his bare feet up so that his fat-tat-friend
would be able to see the canvas on which he was about to
paint

long thereafter,
the fat-tat-friend shook the hand of his sloth friend who
scratched under his armpit & then
walked out with two new sock feet---

some time in the following weeks he gained employment as a
sock model for hanes---
the end.