Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Blood Lust

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You aren’t cooking with gusto,
living with zest,
if you don’t need an apron.
It takes blood-lust.

Bacon, burgers,
melted cheese,
or chicken skin’s
wet, cold grease.

Wash your hands.
Sharpen the knife.
Stains are material
in the menu of life.

Beet juice, wine stains,
poultry guts,
coffee-dark threads
solidifying into clots.


You can’t wash lust
from your clothes, or your eyes,
or damn the well
from between your thighs.

Waste twenty-dollars
on broken wine bottles,
with cash from pockets
stained by red puddles.

Cook wild and free,
and pay the cost.
Abuse the apron
with the mark of blood lust.





(definition of blood lust: strong desire to take part in or witness killing or violence.
My renewed interest in cooking with a passion, has also piqued my sense that cooking, like living hard, is messy and violent.)

8 comments:

  1. ha. so what if its a little messy...and ok, sometimes a lot messy. smiles.

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  2. This is wonderful, Di! It makes me want to break out the carving knife and whack on something.

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  3. I need to chop something up now! You have given me the fever! LOL

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  4. AWESOME poem!

    And dang -- when's breakfast. :)

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  5. amazing poem, really very good - the opening stanza already sets a very high standard, i am in love with it!
    does it take courage to write about blood lust this way? i think it takes, but perhaps it's different for you, easy -

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  6. Poultry guts? Ewwww... I'm eating breakfast here. Throw me a flame. Then I can really sink my teeth in.

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  7. A great messy lovely poem!

    You don't do slow cooking, then?

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