HUNGER

“A hungry man is not a free man.”  Adlai E. Stevenson

Food seems to be something that holds a special fascination for us humans. One only has to think of the pomp and ceremony of grand state dinners, the splendour of elegant restaurants, the thousands of gourmet recipes, cordon bleu cooking schools, the vast number of cookbooks published each year, the huge number of cooking shows on TV, etc, etc, etc… That food and eating seems to also figure prominently in our relationships is no surprise. How often do we not call the objects of our affection by a culinary pet name? “Honey”, “Pumpkin”, “Cream puff”, “Cupcake”, (“mon petit choux-fleur” – my little cauliflower, if you’re French).

The lips and mouth as an erogenous zone need not be dwelt upon, given the important part they play in our mating rituals. “My darling you are so beautiful that I want to gobble you up whole!”… Artists and poets have analogised the sexual act to a cannibalistic ritual and it is not unheard of that a lover kills and eats their other half as an ultimate expression of love, of joining the two into one – a little extreme perhaps, but I am making a point. It is a love bite carried to the extreme…

The prompt from Magpie Tales today was a little repulsive but funny at the same time for me. I could not really see it as artistic, or if I were hard-pressed, I would see it as art of the advertising industry type designed to sell products. All it needed was the copy relating to the sushi restaurant down the street that wanted to advertise its wares. Perhaps it is a cannibals’ sushi restaurant? But an interesting prompt nevertheless (I could not resist the sushi superpositions, with apologies to Boris Hoppek – who incidentally is no stranger to advertising art).

Hunger

The pangs of hunger have bony hands

With sharp nails and sallow skin,

That claw at my stomach relentlessly,

Deepening its bottomless pit,

Excavating my hollow emptiness

To abysmal proportions.

I miss you, ravenously,

And your absence has starved me

Of your epicurean banquet.

My body robbed of your sustenance

Wastes away, malnourished,

Languishing from your imposed starvation.

Only your presence will assuage my craving,

And your homecoming will be a feast

To banish my famish,

Satisfy my lust,

Sate my yen.