Birthday Cake Flavoured Protein Bar

In a place full of things
People Need and People Want
and stuff
People Think They Need Or Want
you reside alone on a shelf marked “Other”.

A capitalist bet 
on how farfetched its reach 
led to your creation
so now you sit 
strategically by the checkout 
flirting with consumers 
who cling to handbags and sanity
in equal measure.

You trespass into my eyeline 
and I wonder
who is your target market?
An annual gym bunny?
A desperate diabetic?
I bought you out of a sense of mutual pity,
boredom,
the half-promise of a press up
and a poem.

You taste…unnecessary.

But after the Earth has been reduced to clear
and before the next delivery crawls out of the sea
I pray you will survive
in a New World starter pack
along with insulin
a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger
and a leaflet 
on the dangers of excess.

Stephen scribbles poetry whenever he is not forcing a member of the public into a CT scanner. His poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Drawn to the Light, ROPES, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Strukturriss and Vox Galvia.