table knife,
life’s
edge
forged
by fire’s
most orange lake.
from your mirrored-face
of steel
you still reflect
the paleolithic
prophecy
of your crude
ancestors
from which you
evolved:
the chipping
flint and the
hand axe,
both used by death
to sustain life,
both stained by the
blood of the hunt,
and by
the bloodletting
of rituals, to remind
and to remain
as spotted rust
on your shiny
smooth blade.
and now,
you hide
in silence
in our kitchen drawers,
and lay flat
and impassive
on our eating tables,
as though you were innocent.
table knife
in the hands
of a grandmother
you are
kind and deliberate.
you cut
to feed but
never to fatten,
in the hands
of a parent
you hang
like the sword
of Damocles
over uneaten peas
and threaten
like the sword
of Solomon
to halve everything
into equal shares,
disrupting
nature's, natural
imbalances,
in the hands
of a child
you cut quick,
and you scrape
and squeal
like a pig running
from a band
of hungry,
hunting
pygmies.
but
table knife
in the purple
hands of politics,
why must you
always cut life
so thinly sliced
and indelicate
like delicatessen
meat? can you
stay sharp and still
broaden your blade
enough to carve
more generous
portions
for the poor?
for without
food on our plates
to cut, you shall remain
flat and silent
in our drawers,
absent from our tables,
and as lifeless as
a silver bass,
rotting in the basin
of a dry lake, and
to us, you shall
remain forever
guilty.