Tag Archives: poem about appetite

Culinary Differences (Coping with an Artistic Palate)

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Culinary Differences
(Coping with an Artistic Palate)

I’ll admit that I’m perplexed
for my spouse is sorely vexed
because he finds my menus bland
and untouched by artistic hand.

He finds my soup so pale and thin, it
needs a bit of color in it,
so I asked him how to do
more pleasing palettes for my stew.

He painted me a portrait of
a consommé he said he’d love
with so many veggies in it
and a ruby wine to thin it.

He’d like to wrap his mouth around
colors that are more profound.
to the point where I’m perplexed
over what I should cook next.

My color combination tends
towards browns and whites of various blends. 
Might I aspire to red and yellow,
with pickled beets in lemon Jell-o?

He says my taste in food is static
whereas his is more erratic.
But, tired of his bitch and moan,
perhaps I’ll let him cook his own.

Alternate ending:  (don’t read this one, Sam)

He suggests a novel dish
of tomato aspic around fish?
The thought of it makes my lips pucker.
Perhaps I’ll just divorce the -ucker!!!

 

Prompts today are red and yellow, pickle, perplexed, aspire, mouth, portrait and erratic. All of the images are from Unsplash.

Sated

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Sated

Flirtation is cathartic—a furbelow of life.
Though it is mainly fictitious, still it eases pain and strife.
It sets our spirits soaring and makes us feel much younger,
but takes the edge off appetites without dispelling hunger.

A nibble here, a small bite there might set our lips to smacking,
but a deeper part of us detects what might be lacking.
Caviar on toast is fine for an initial tasting,
but what we need is turkey,
crisp and golden from its basting,

but succulent inside, or a meal that fills us up
like an egg salad sandwich or pea soup in a cup.
Flirting’s great for starters, but it isn’t real.
What really solves an appetite is eating the whole meal.

Prompt words for today are soaring, cathartic, fictitious and furbelow.

Midnight Bully

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Midnight Bully

A constant aberration, it emerges in the night
to assert its domination, for it will have its bite.

It provokes me to assist it as I switch on the light,
and though I try hard to resist it,  I always lose the fight.

I wander down the hall and once the kitchen is in sight,
I make a beeline for the fridge as I bemoan my plight.

I am simply not to blame. It’s just my appetite
that draws me from my midnight bed to assert its right.

It is not my choice, for I have been true to my diet.
It’s my appetite that simply must get up and pie it!

 

Prompts for today are emerge, aberration, provoke and switch.

 

Happily, this is fiction, at least for the past three months, as I have been true to my diet for that long. 24 pounds as of today, but as you see, my subconscious and the prompt words conspired to take me down a naughty path creatively if not physically.

Cattitude

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Cattitude

The grey cat cries and cries for food, but in spite of her bitchin’,
it seems there’s naught to satisfy her in her master’s kitchen.
She would not eat the Whiskas tuna that she loved last week.
Fresh hamburger? She only deigned to have a peek.

Pork tenderloin she shuns as well as beef and cream and cheese.
A bit of gravy is another treat that does not please.
Fresh bass I bought and poached for her merely got the nose.
No mouth was closed upon it. It was not a taste she chose.

Chicken in soup with veggies? She chanced to have a taste,
then raised her nose and flicked her tail and made away in haste.
There’s canned tuna on the counter with the other four
new cat foods that I bought today at the cat food store.

I’ll try them out tomorrow, but I do not have much hope.
Chances are her majesty will only sniff and mope.
What is it with these felines that gives them attitude?
I’ve never seen the double of this old girl’s cattitude.

She awakens me at scandalous times, demanding of her feed,
then looks at me askance when I attempt to fill her need.
I fear it’s true she’s skin and bones––my fault it is supposed,
but I assure you that her fast is strictly self-imposed!!!

 

Not fiction! I made a special trip into town today in spite of my wracking cough, donned a face mask and braved Walmart. I bought fresh fish, which I abhor, for the first time in my life, along with all of the foods mentioned above and so far, she chanced one tiny bite. But, just checked and she drank all of the fresh cream I poured out for her. Her highness is satiated for the time being!

I’m linking this to dVerse Poets’ Open Link Night. See other poems HERE.

And to see their website, go HERE.

Appetite

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Appetite

It is the appetite we wrap our skin around like clothes—
that we push down but that squeezes out around us
in spite of our best efforts—
that appetite we run from and run to.

It lies waiting for us
behind the cold glass windows of stores,
coils in our cooking pots
and curls out in their steam.

Appetite sits under the Christmas tree
wrapped up in red paper and green ribbon.
It is the appetite of the Barbie Doll and the erector set,
the jigsaw puzzle and the bouncing ball of the jacks game.

It is the appetite
that lies dormant in our gonads,
jumps in our semen,
sleeps in an egg.

It vibrates in a vocal cord,
trembles on the fingers of a lover,
swims on the tongue of a nursing infant,
catapults off the slingshot of a seven-year-old boy.

Appetite kinks out from the curling iron,
chews itself from the tips of our fingernails
and spins itself from our feet
during a jungle rhythm or a southern reel.

Appetite pipes from the end of a flute
and shakes off the edges of a tambourine.
It is sealed in a tube of paint,
carried by a brush to the canvas where it dances its own dance.

It is appetite that hides in our computer keys
and in the tips of the fingers that tap them,
appetites lined up on our paper
where we have assembled them in unaccustomed order.

They are what bring us here,
these appetites that can never be catalogued or collected in their entirety—
our appetites better presented in a brown paper bag,
jumbled like penny candies, tumbled over each other like in a junk drawer.

Appetites that can never fully be defined
or neatly wrapped up in a moral or a surprise ending.
Appetites that can never be satisfied,
because our appetites want everything,

and gaining everything, reach out for more.

 

The prompt today is dormant. The prompt word today brought something up in me that has lain dormant for many years.  That is, this poem which was actually written in a MUCH longer form twenty-five years ago. “. . .that lies dormant in our gonads” kept running through my mind, and although I knew I had written it, I couldn’t remember where.  Finally, I did a search in my poetry file and found this poem. The original I submitted to a national poetry competition and won first prize for.  The judge said it was for my pure audacity in submitting a poem that took 12 minutes to read!  I published it in a shorter form two years ago in my blog, but even that tightened poem was probably too long for most viewers to read. At any rate, here it is in its newest and shortest form–a poem from within a poem, where it has lain dormant for twenty-five years.