a hunger artist

kafka wrote a story about a man who starves himself for an audience.
they used to line up. it was an art form. people were moved.

then, slowly, the crowds stop coming.
he keeps fasting anyway, in a cage nobody visits,
past his record, past the point where it would even be counted,
because nobody is counting.

and at the end they ask him why.
and he says he only ever did it because he never found the food he liked.
if he had, he says, he would have eaten like everybody else.

that’s the whole thing. that’s the joke and the wound together.
the great artist, the great sufferer, the man in the cage,
saying: i wasn’t strong. i just never wanted anything on offer.