A break from philosophy, I see. This is a pretty viscerally funny evocation of overindulgence. Wow! I can almost feel the fat pouring forth. (Your photo doesn’t support the veracity of this, though, lol.)
The title is captivating, but the poem abandons, at least overtly, the dice metaphor until the last line. Which dice exactly is the n metaphorically rolling? In the bulk of the poem, fat seems to be the only thing that’s rolling, and the dice, with their small, geometric rigidity, seem to me a distraction from the overall feeling of the poem.
Interesting poke/póke “rhyme” (which I guess technically wouldn’t even be a half-rhyme, but I think the humor here excuses that). Nice fat-feeling spondee on “fat horse” and tripping anapest on “on the car-.” And funny litany of new learned phrases of denial. How about some trochaic sub for “avoid” like “bypass” to keep the meter in that line? The following “[a]nd toss myself at the dartboard of hope” is certainly a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may meter, which, while it suits the line’s message, falls into tetrameter with its three feet of subs. Might you modulate this enough to at least keep the pentameter? “And swallow myself” is an interesting conceit with a nice metrical evocation of swallowing, but “a wolf that eats its pups”—if the n swallows himself, then the pups are symbolic of himself, apparently? That metaphor feels a bit strained. “[b]ecause the dice say die”—interesting wordplay, but again, this dice reference picks up a metaphor that doesn’t seem to have been developed and that is a bit mysterious once examined. “I starve for life,” which intrigues with its double meaning, plays nicely against “die.” But I suspect there’s a better way to do that.
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