POETS UNITED - FOOD

“And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.” - Neil Gaiman

Happy New Year to all Poets of Poets United! This week the theme is “Food” and perhaps it is apt, considering how the holiday period we have just lived through is associated so much with eating and feasting!. I hope everyone enjoyed the break and got some rest. I seem to have been busier than usual and feel as though I need a holiday to get over the holidays…

Here is my offering, influenced perhaps by the Dalí painting above, “Cannibalism in Autumn” (1936). 

The Food of Love

The food of love
Is cooked in the kitchen of familiarity;
Each dish prepared
With consummate carelessness,
Bred by intimacy
That has been carefully cultivated over years.

Your flesh warm,
Inviting and desirable, more succulent
Than any carnivorous delectation
Placed upon dinner table
By a skilful chef,
And dressed by an expert saucier.

We feast on our carnality,
The kitchen table suitable for our excesses
As kiss upon kiss
Leads to our fusion according to our recipe
Perfected by practice
And by our apposite harmony of spicy mixtures.

Once sated to surfeit,
All spent, we gaze out of the windows of our eyes
Seeing both sides of the coin
An Eden and a Gehenna, both prized and reviled;
Our meeting fleeting, but,
Our love eternal, transcending the everyday.

The apple more than temptation,
The larder fuller than hunger would dictate,
The heart brimming with expectation,
The desire more searing than the hotplate,
Our cooking preparations more to feed the soul
Than jaded palates with sweetmeat to cajole.