They say not to cry over spilled milk,
Not to let it scar you,
It’s only milk after all,
There is logic to those words,
But consider this,
What if it took heart to pour said milk?
What if you missed drinking milk every day?
What if this milk was everything to you?
And what if it were the last milk you’d drink?
Would you still not cry?
Now hear me dearest reader,
I’ve not been upfront with you,
The poets prerogative,
If it were not yet overt,
I am not speaking about milk.
We are perishable foodstuffs,
As if stored poorly in a pantry,
Life eats away at us,
Spoiling us over the decades,
Many simply go to waste,
Forgotten as soon as the casket shuts,
Some are only preserved by their feats,
Charity or depravity,
But not us creators,
Art is our vinegar,
Our formaldehyde,
It pickles us,
Yellowed pages stinking of ethanol,
Yet stings upon our wounds,
We write to live forever,
Paint to become immortal,
Magnum opera as epitaphs,
Books and portraits and sonnets,
Where our bodies once were.
Normal conversation is a main course,
One that rarely tantalises me,
And rarer still is it served with skill,
I find it an unappealing slop,
An insipid entrée,
The texture of the words grows unpalatable,
Rough and unforgiving,
Undercooked and shallow,
These dull strings of words,
They are not the juicy flesh of wagyu beef,
Nor the silky glide of spaghetti bolognese,
Not even the warming quaff of soup,
They do not entice,
Or enkindle,
Nor entertain,
I am not sated by that drivel,
Increasingly so,
The texture of normality is grist to me,
Absent of taste,
Mediocre chat bound for the toilet bowl,
But then again,
It has to be stated,
Perhaps it is my taste,
Such as it is.
I swear some men are made of jelly,
And some ladies of taffy,
They bounce back from any ill,
Whether by their own design or not,
Keeping their original shape,
No dents or wounds,
Still smelling of lollipops and cologne,
Deep down however,
Some desserts are truly unhealthy,
Despite the tasty exterior,
They are made from compost,
Closet skeletons and dead flies,
They provide only heartache and ulcers,
And yet still come up stinking of daisies.
At times my mind becomes a cranial soup,
A colourless slop of muddled ideas,
Far from palatable,
And even further from the acumen I strive for,
An anarchic hodge-podge,
I’ve lost my centre,
I’m disoriented,
I’m perplexed,
Grossed out by the muck my brain offers up,
I hear it sloshing about between my ears,
When confusion takes over,
I try to separate fiction from logic,
Taking sips begrudgingly,
Hoping to digest an ounce of sense,
But the odds are undeniably stacked.
The party is over,
The feast and potations are consumed,
Only crumbs of crackling and wine vapours remain,
The bodies have scarpered,
And now comes the crash,
And plunge you shall,
Fatigue comes like a plague,
The joy from before feels like a dream,
Yesterdays consumption has become a force of gravity,
Roast beef like boulders on each eyelid,
The sofa is your workbench for the day,
And post-revel debilitation is todays vocation.
This table holds years,
Connections soaked into its timber,
As well as generations under its side,
Saturnalia has brought us all here,
Grandparents to parents to siblings,
Matriarch at the head as is expected,
She feeds us like she holds us together,
Roasties and more variety than a butcher,
We’re all together,
As one,
As a family,
Around this table.
The kitchen is a workshop of a different kind,
With its own arsenal of craftsmen’s tools,
Knife and stove,
Whisk and cutting board,
It’s a form of alchemy,
Culinary magic,
If cast by a maestro,
An ambrosia made at home,
Via a process in artful motion,
The scents play a symphony in the air,
Following a conductor of a culinary edge,
From the humble ingredients,
Bland and squatting in the pantry,
To dishes worthy of an empress,
Regal and flawless in execution,
Euphoria for ones tongue.
Poison is everywhere,
Accepted as a necessity,
Chemicals of every dire strain,
Vile greens and eerie crimsons,
Foreboding browns and unassuming clear liquids,
Synthesized by white coats and labs,
Injected into all our feed,
They do not have baleful names,
But do you know their makeup?
I do wonder,
Is every atom reputable?
Chemistry is a risky game to play,
With far too many snake eye variables,
To you who claim your body as you own,
I ask you earnestly,
Do you truly know what you take in,
Which dire chemicals you ply?
WorldofHarley 