Soap

So you left the soap in your mouth a little too long.
Big deal. It burns and turns into a bitter creme,
it might make you cry but it's your own damn fault
for being obscene. Your words hold you up
and your words hold you down. Spit it up,
or keep it down. No one is stopping you now.
Go ahead, show us how much you've grown.
Practice your very adult-like tone of voice.
Intonation, detonation. Defuse the youth
in you and pry your priorities from the groove.
It's your move. Say something delicious.
Or say nothing at all, else you lose. 

feast

Like like like
who woulda
thunk it that
the thunder
would be so
mean: that
the prodigal
son would
ever have a
dream beyond
himself, that
he would accept
a feast if it
were brought
to his feet.
Like he
doesn't eat
meat.
So a feast
of carrots
& onions
& celery
might
deliver you
from this
trap of
scarred
celibacy.

Cuisine

If I could eat a word
and chew it like bamboo,
and strip down the absurd
with the flick of my tongue,
I'd ask for more than one.

I could eat soap or sepulcher,
an aplomb, a nexus or fetus,
whatever's not a spider or ogre.
I once had doubt and taboo:
bitter, no doubt, and crumbly too.

Lately I eat more carefully.
That other night when you cried,
I felt that word all over inside.
The drunk hornet harasses the hive.
That word, it eats me alive.

Stagger

This bum bee
thinks he knows me.

Never trust stripes.
Never go to Mexico,

say the people
who never go to Mexico.

I thought maybe the bee
would attempt a trade,

maybe a drop of his comb
for a wedge of my hair.

But he kept running into me

with his slow dumb siege,

knocking on my jeans--

really, just bothering me.

I turned his stripes
into a mush of gold,

never quite forgiving.

Hunger Games

Fat nutritionist
help nobody:
knows nobody
'cept her
gumdrop body.

She ain't ashamed
to play the game.

She waits
with a butter knife

to poke your life;
to feed your scale

to a passing whale.