__MacDonalds Soliloquy__
or, Parody after Macbeth
Gregory Lam
Feb. 5/96

Is this a burger which I see before me,
The soft bun in my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I eat thee not, and yet I want thee still.
Art thou not, gourmets vision, sensible
To taste as to sight? or art thou but
A burger of the mind, a false dinner,
Proceeding from the meat-oppressed stomach?
I see thee yet, in form as palatable
As this cracker which now I chew.
Thou nourishst me on the way that I was going,
And such condiments I was to use!
Mine mouth are made the fools o the other senses,
The calories worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy plate and Happy Meals of fat,
Which was not so before. Theres no such food:
It is the bloody diet which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now oer the Weight Watchers
Tastebuds seem dead, and raw salads abuse
The growling bowels; famished celebrate
Jenny Craigs offerings, and witherd hunger,
Alarumd by his sentinel, the bathroom scale,
Laughs as it watches, thus with his mocking numbers.
With Hamburglars ravishing strides, towards his goal
I move like a ghost. Thou warm and delicious beef,
Hear not my teeth, which way they chew, for fear
My very swallows prate of my gluttony,
And take the present mirror from the room,
When now suits do not fit. Whiles I starve, he lives:
Buffets to the heat of charbroiled chicken gives.
[A bell rings.]
I go, and it is done; the microwave bell invites me.
Hear it not, Tongue; for it is a knell
That summons thy mouth to heaven and thy body to hell.
[Exeunt.]