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.)