On this tan cutting board
You earn your corrupted name:
“Alligator pear.”
The serrated blade
Punctures your hide—a balloon
Under a pin’s pressure,
Shades of green furling out.
I’m sure you’d prefer
Vegetable status if you developed
Self-awareness; or maybe
You’d withdraw from knowledge
Of the human type.
I trust my cooking songs—
Slowdive and Chaka Khan—
Can’t hurt you anymore
Than your predestined obliteration;
Mastication via your domesticators:
It all ends in fertilizer.
(Where you began!)
O, avocado, phantom “fruit”
Born of the self-same Life Source,
Schopenhauer’s Will,
My transient enjoyment of you
Within this vegetable salad—
An Achaean enclosed by Trojan blades—
Suffices for a life of sanctity.