Tag Archives: food poems

The Taste of Love

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The Taste of Love

If love were a savor, a flavor or a taste,
a sauce or certain gravy, a marinade or paste,
Cupid could write a menu and we could order in
with romance as an appetizer, sealed up in a tin.
We could order lovers as others order food
according to our appetite, according to our mood.
I’d start out with Greek salad to titillate my palate.
Then move on to fresh lobsters beaten with a mallet.
A juicy steak would be served next with T-bone still inside.
I’d savor all the tender flesh with French fries on the side.
Dessert would be rich chocolate cake washed down with ginseng float
to make it slide so smoothly, smoothly down my throat.
There would be no tears, dear, and not one broken heart
if love came from a menu, to order à la carte.

 

Squash Blossom: Flower (and Poem) of the Day, Dec 7, 2017

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Squash Blossom

Hard to herd and hard to wrangle,
growing in a clustered tangle
here beside my kitchen stoop,
good as fritters or in soup.
Squash blooms don’t merely do their duty
as a thing of sun-filled beauty.
Their life as flowers fades in haste.
Best to enjoy them as a taste!
(Or, if at growing things you’re feckless,
just enjoy them as a necklace!)

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Lone Mountain Squash Blossom necklace.  Image “borrowed” from internet.

 

 

For Cee’s Flower Prompt.

“Diet”ribe

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“Diet”ribe

I have given up on oatmeal, overdosed on kale.
All these faddish food taboos have gone beyond the pale.
I do not count my calories, my glutens or my carbs.
The benefits for doing so are outweighed by the barbs.
I’m not turned on by Atkins. I can’t abide a fast.
I tried microbiotic, but the microbes didn’t last.

It’s become an epic battle when the girls go out to brunch.
It’s easier brokering world peace that where to go for lunch.
Before we take a mouthful, we must peruse all the ads
and compare what’s on the menu to the latest diet fads.
Then, once we find the perfect place and make the reservation,
Serafina calls me up to share her trepidation.

She’s started a new diet––something fabulously new––
and much as she hates to stir the pot, this restaurant won’t do.
We can’t go out for hamburgers. Laura’s a vegetarian.
She can’t abide the scent of flesh. She finds it most barbarian.
Of course, she will eat foodstuffs that are certified agrarian,
but salad’sout because my other friend is a fruitarian.

I asked them all to my house, bought exotic fruits and plums,
thinking a fruity salad would offend the fewest gums;
but a new friend cannot eat raw fruit. She finds it unhygienic,
and my artist friend will not eat foods she finds unphotogenic.
She balked at the rambutan and when she tried to swallow it,
choked and had to chug down a carafe of wine to follow it.

Molly is insisting on a diet ketogenic,
while Lucy won’t eat any vegetation that is scenic.
We’re reduced to no more dining out. Potlucks will have to do
with every guest providing whatever they can chew.
Me? I’ll bring a pizza. Pepperoni. Extra cheese.
And everyone can envy me as they eat what they please!

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night#204

Blueberry, Blueberry, Blackbird Pie: NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 26

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Blueberry, Blueberry, Blackbird Pie

Gotta get a cookie. Gotta eat some pie.
Gotta have some sugar, do or die.
Grab a fork and grab a spoon.
Sugar shack opening pretty soon.

Hey lolly hey lolly, blueberry pie.
Hope to have some by and by.

Old Mother Crank put a pie up on the shelf.
Thought she’d eat it all herself.
Along came a blackbird who grabbed a bit of crust,
then the whole damn pie as the old lady cussed.

Hey lolly, hey lolly, no more pie.
Blackbird made it go bye bye.

Old Mother Fussbudget loaded up her gun.
She didn’t have pie, but she was gonna have some fun.
When she spied that blackbird way up high,
she fired her gun up in the sky.

Hey lolly, hey lolly, no berry pie.
Just that blackbird winging through the sky.

Now old Mother Wigglewaggy baked another pie.
It’ll be ready in the blinking of an eye.
She had two pieces, then she had a third,
Since she didn’t have fruit, she used the bird!!

Hey lolly, hey lolly, no bird pie.
I prefer my blackbird served on rye!

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a call and response poem.

http://www.napowrimo.net/

Foreign Food

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Foreign Food

In the garden or on the hoof,
in the lake or on the roof,
we grow it, herd it, shoot it, hook it.
Pick it, wash it, chop it, cook it.

Wherever we see food, we take it.
Stir it, spit it, fry or bake it.
In Japan is the exception.
Some ancient chef had a conception

that he would not cook the fish–
just serve it raw upon the dish.
It is a strange way to be fed–
to eat a fish that’s merely dead!

In African countries, I have found,
they build a fire on the ground
and cook their food in cauldrons there
flavored with spices hot and rare.

In Sicily, the mafia bosses
favor rich tomato sauces.
First they’re fed by wife or mother,
Then they go out and kill each other.

Mexicans use corn instead
of wheat to make their daily bread.
They fold it around beans or meat
and chilis to turn up the heat!

America’s a country where
there’s food from every country there.
What’s unique in our repast
is that we want our food here fast!

The NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem about food, and the WordPress daily prompt was faraway.  I’m going to try to combine them!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/faraway/

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-six-4/

Short and to the Point

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Short and to the Point

Eat to live or live to eat?
Chewing’s a thing that can’t be beat!

Eschewing chewing can’t be done,
for masticating’s just too fun.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/live-to-eat/

Five Shadormas

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The Prompt: For this week, write a shadorma (a non-rhyming six-line poem consisting of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllables.)  Instead of following the WordPress prompt, My Circle of 5 will be 5 Shadormas. Thanks, Sam, for the prompt.

Used

 This paper
very slightly used–
erasures
and a stab.
This morning’s poem now dead–
unsung, unmourned.


Chinese Takeout

That rice grain
and the plastic fork–
evidence
against me
of another food court sin.
Yes, I ate it all.


Misanthrope

Walk away
lest you find reason
to stay here,
fouling up
your determination to
have a fucked-up life.


Signing the Papers

You prompt me
to mind my timing.
Five o’clock
on the dot.
I come early anyway.
Her scent signs the air.


Salt Water Taffy

Sweet toffee
cannot hide the tang–
bitter salt
on my tongue–
of all the tears I swallowed,
waiting for your touch.

To see more shadormas, go HERE.

Ice Cream Manifesto

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Ice Cream Manifesto

It’s just a little kiosk in the middle of the street
between two one-way roadways, in the center where they meet.
There aren’t any tables. There isn’t any chair.
You have to stand out in the street to give your order there.

Mango or tequila, tamarind or corn.
As you can see, the flavors don’t agree with any norm.
They’ve ice cream made of purest cream , but they have ices, too,
in so many flavors that I always choose a few.

My favorite? Strawberry ice. Vanilla under it.
I get a cone so I don’t have to wait to plunder it.
I finish it as I drive home, licking all the way.
I give my dogs the empty cone. It always makes their day.

The cone is hard as any bone–sweet and chewy, too.
If I were a better mother, I’d arrange that they had two.
But though I know I’d enjoy two passing o’er my lips,
Later I would not enjoy their presence on my hips.

I love that little ice cream stand. Love it all to heck,
with its lovely homemade ice cream made in Jocotepec.
That pueblo is quite close to me. It’s just five miles or so.
So it isn’t that it is so very far for me to go.

The thing is that for me, ice cream is an impulse buy.
It’s not a major purchase, like a cake or like a pie.
If I just happen to be passing and see that fellow there
waving his ice cream scoops at me, right out in the air,

preordination says that I must stop and have one now–
a bite of crispy wafer cone, adorned with ice of cow.
I do not claim responsibility for decisions of this kind.
It’s a creative impulse, not a matter of the mind.

So if you’re a public servant–an official of this town
looking for new laws to pass, don’t tear this kiosk down.
Fill some potholes in the street or put a speed bump in.
For legislating ice cream bans is sure to be a sin!

 

The Prompt: Do or Die–You have three hundred words to justify the existence of your favorite person, place, or thing. Failure to convince will result in it vanishing without a trace. Go! (355 words, poetry police–so sue me!)