Cold Shark Sandwich (a poem)

In my early 30s I wrote a poem called "Cold Shark Sandwich." Not to be confused with Jeff Bridges' shark steak sandwich in The Contender (which came much later), but close.

Cold Shark Sandwich

I'm eating a cold
shark sandwich
at a round table
in the open space
between time
and electricity.
I adhere to the chair
as if gravity were
my mother.
Other entities in jeans
and sneakers
pass through my field,
oblivious to my oblivion,
neither hungry nor full,
yearning nor complacent,
lilting nor subdued.
Our combined weight matches
the day's insouciance,
the drab light, the rain,
the hastened inertia.
I am menacing in my
easiness, vengeful
in my casual regard.
We swim together,
my lunch,
my thoughts,
my subjects,
and we conceive
each other,
ourselves,
the world.
By design we are
the designers,
by birth we are
children—
naïve, tenuous, charged,
made of everything we see,
seeing nothing we've made—
children whose favorite toy
is the box
and whose oceans are full
of cold
shark
sandwiches.