A poetic indictment of judgment disguised as taste, and the quiet dignity of those who refuse to be consumed.
The Human Buffet
Poem and Reflection by M.W. Van Dyke
They can shame my body.
They can attack me, verbally.
Yet here I remain, standing.
Unbowed and unashamed.
Their words do not shame me.
They are only disclosing their own perversions,
Because I never thought of them in that way.
They look at people like meat.
Not with hunger for connection,
but with appetite for judgment,
based on a craving of another type.
“She's too fat!”
“I could never get with him!”
As if their taste defines someone else’s worth,
and value to the world.
Not just for consumption,
in the back alley, or the backseat.
They don’t want to eat every dish—
just to announce what they’d never touch.
It’s not preference.
It’s performance.
A cruelty disguised as critique.
A libido unrefined,
and unrestrained.
The man they mock never looked at them.
The woman they body shamed never even noticed them.
Never considered them.
Never invited their gaze.
Yet they salivate.
Not from desire,
But from the lack thereof,
And that stimulation they so actively crave.
They judge and they attack, based on that lack.
Yet it is also—
To draw away from themselves such casual,
and precise considerations
of perfections no one ever has,
and never considering that...
taste doesn't always go both ways.
We approach those we are attracted to,
And we hope that attraction is returned,
That interest is returned. Even that curiosity.
When it is not, we sigh, and go on about our day,
Though it might take us a month or a year.
That is natural, and unprofaned.
And those who cannot, who must shame and have their say,
They will always be that way, to their last unhappy, bitter day.
They carry a maturity that never actually matured.
And claim a gravity that not every body feels the pull of.
When we shame, we really say,
Look at them. Not at me.
And the truth of it is,
There is nothing there much to see.
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