my soul yearns for butcher who can make soup
containing very little meat.
as a deer longs
for flowing
evil sparkle dust,
so my soul longs for
beautiful melodies
disturbing my spirit,
raising bamboo decals on
red-gold coconut milk
with a consoling, but punishing heat.

*     *     *     *     *

I am widening my table
to be as wide as the room.

I am raising my table
to be as high as the ceiling.

I am canceling my subscriptions to
House Beautiful and Architectural Digest
because their antiquated notions
of what a dining room should look like
disgust me.

*     *     *     *     *

So that I could shriek every time I heard the voice
of a milkman or caught sight of a butcher,
I learned much
from a kindly butcher
and a kindly milkman –
and the milkman was so kindly
he’d even do a reach-around.

*     *     *     *     *

My soul thirsts for romance with
non-meat Chicken Soup.

My flesh longs for
“nicey-nice,” “positive”
stew cuts.

This is part of why I am
on Effexor.

*     *     *     *     *

Here’s something The Iron Chef
will not tell you:

No Japanese meal is complete without
the deprived-crab wheelie bags and
literally anything whose slime falls fast as sweat will
when it is summer and you are on horseback.

But do not permit sour seafood
to taint your wonderful choices
of a crowns from a sweet,
yeasty, pull-apart
fleet of necks or
glorious mindful sand castles
similar to corn meal
in childish eyes.

*     *     *     *     *

my fine beach
is on fire –
even in Paradise.

this doesn’t quite make my mouth water,
but it doesn’t make me want to cancel
the clambake either.

but that’s me!
I’ve raised a few chickens
and tapped the maple tree
(that is to say that
I once was physically doing all of these things).

*     *     *     *     *

standing in an oven to
get a first-hand look, are you,
Food Informant?

you can find everything in
Prevention but
the handle
can’t you?

you, bald-headed inside of two
de-boned Holy Arks!
on account of your degrading yourself,
my sense is
thick and creamy (not to mention on
sabbatical).

My six-door marrow-chili,
bigger than some feelings
swollen with eggs,
makes my gullet full of
“sickness” in the best way possible.

My back is
“seedless.”

My own family
was widely believed to speed death by giving the departing soul a
bar of soap, so at the last shower
there would be soap
and not soup.

But that’s OK.
I am a big “Monkey Man”
chopped down to little monkey pieces
you can buy wholesale in cases like
canned chicken carcasses.

*     *     *     *     *

Sometimes, while chopping
or sautéing the old-fashioned way
Jupiter’s discriminations,
I think, “And to think,
something in this
butcher paper
was also once inside of me.”

*     *     *     *     *

Man breathing,
my back
pickled tongue!

My soul
is endlessly lapping at an unpeeled onion!

My stomach
is pretty great too!

*     *     *     *     *

my favorite photo is
the photo simply
of the shells in a large heart,
the perfectly thin mound
of haste,
my mother’s
best friend’s birthday treat –
boiling the accident
down to
a garbure, which is a lovely French soup.

*     *     *     *     *

Who would destroy
AmazingRibs.com?

Who would encrust
the classic conflict of flesh vs. soul,
and townfolk vs. Little grublings who need no soup?

Be careful that your skin is not
too hot, as this will cause the
Baal in silence to dine on vulture-soup
and inadvertently
grow larger than your logic,
grander than Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies,
1000% more potent than
100% biblically-true strength of
hot bean soup
which resides in one’s muscles
not very long.

*     *     *     *     *

How can I help my chef
to trust in God’s care
when she is afraid of
a certain type of
lamb sausage?

God who is the hayfield
so that the horses could graze over,
bless the “The Christmas ham.”
Bless the hay
paired with fennel.
Bless a weathered soul with cowboy ghost features.
Bless food fears
and food
and pet a pig
and enjoy the pre-semen malt.

*     *     *     *     *

Crazy she-doctor opening
“real” patients
near a deserted stretch of road
that might have involved
a sudden detour,
my goal is to
use meat more as a flavoring than as a
piccolo –
and I always achieve my goals!

*     *     *     *     *

Deep, bottom of the
dying-to-be-there auntie
wholly saturating my
odd lemon delight
in all of its flowing words
available in an eternal wake,
in the past,
my chili
raged all around
a rifle,
my humble,
painfully short,
damp, depleted,
tent remained unpacked
in the motel parking lot,
my soul longed for
gratitude, plans, wishes, desires,
my psyche (or soul) became fragmented during
the stew course
and then yearned to
cure cucumber.

Now my soul magnifies its own
butcher knife eyelashes –
shredding my insides when my soul
blinks rapidly.

*     *     *     *     *

Yeah, My Hoppin’ Soul
is ‘a rollin’ around in meat
to make a small package
of meat
flat like a meat rug.

*     *     *     *     *

What difference does it make whether the bottle is
a dish or a broken blue ski
that has this like gloopy wallpaper of boots
filling up the boot?

I know I will eventually
get the soup into my mouth.

I know it as sure as I know that
in a post-apocalyptic future
My Mother Can’t Possibly Know
the only hungry soul.