After John Prine:
“There's flies in the kitchen,
I can hear 'em there buzzing,
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today”

Mr. John Prine

                       <£>

There's flies in the kitchen,
all around my eyes and head,
they’re just gossiping bout me,
why most mornings
I’m still laying in bed
at almost near
noon-time, why too, them
angels and their a-fluttering wings,
a-flapping, still hanging around,
when they’re so far from home

truth be told, I kinda like new combinations,
the musical vibes, magic incantations,
boogie woogie, fuzzy buzzy eyelash sounds,
bluesy background harmonies against the
harps them angel wings are playing,
I’m getting every note writ down so,

I can play it well on the morrow, on my
following them higher up, all the ways up
on that glowing shining stairway to heaven,
guarantee-****-teeing entrance through the
pearly gates for the flies and a lazy, no-account
worthless S.O.B. like me

awhile, a time ago, wrote:

“the oven's writing warmth,
still faint discernible,
giving off the aroma of heated ink,
upon a skin-smooth page..”

                         <>

my words returned by the commentator-in-chief:

“Tells me why the best part of my
time with her was spent in the kitchen.”^

lay fallow my emotive, a response due catalogued
but unfulfilled till today, oh hell it is a moody way,
partly cloudy day, raining in between sunny  brief teasing episodic.

perfect.

for the mixed mood, a melancholia of innocence with a dash of a salty, self-reflective hazing, choosing careful words when I write without clear direction, you want to rush outside, get set up, and then surrender-retreat inside to the comfort zone, the hearty, all-involving,  kitchen where the ink is always kept on warm on the glass topped oven, and the dripping-coffee-machine never shuts down, at-the-ready stale crackers in the cupboard, and all these writing utensils at the two-handy, when she comes in, and with a quick surveying, kicks me out, to make us accoladed good food, with these words:

“my darling only love poetry man, render unto me, this captaincy,
my fiefdom now, and herein are kept my ingredients and tools, whe my words are secreted.”  You mistake the warmth here as a necessary condition for thy composition, but not so, the warmth required travels in the hearth of the body, get thee to the nook, to the sunroom, or our bed where I catch you prepositioning conjunctions to join weeping verbs, adjective so riotous their beauteous is stolen by God i’m the fall, thoughts worthy of becoming verses and stanzas, the exclaim the wonders of thy perspective, thy goodly nature, thy odor of freshly stirred vocabulary, an alluring stew in a new ***, surrender this cooking place to me in order that you might chef a new creation, half mine, half yours, all ours.”

they say
boys want a girl
that is good
in the kitchen

i just
want a girl
that is good
in my arms

cinnamon sugar
your hands mash the crumble cake
warmth fills the kitchen

I hug my mother most in the kitchen.
She reaches up to wrap her arms
around me, and I lay my head
on her shoulder. We breathe
together, relax into one another.
The oak wood under our feet creaks
with each shift of weight. The kitchen is

warm like her. Though that dead plant sits
in the window, we are full of life.
My mother’s fake green grapes and strands of
ivy weave above our heads;
our own personal jungle.
The red-brown cabinets and
bright yellow lights
shine down around us as we sway,
rubbing each others’ backs with a soft hum.

We fit together: mother, daughter.
Since childhood I have not been afraid
to run to her soft speckled skin and be held
by her, even when I was tall
enough to do the holding myself.
We have the same nose,
same smile,
same droop to our right eye.
Same tendency to accidents
like knife cuts
or oven burns
or trips over nothing.
Who am I
but a part of her?

My sister pads into the kitchen
on tiptoes— a habit she could never break
since a child. I see her quiet eyes
flicker downward,
see her scoot herself away from
my mother’s arms
see her close into herself
instead. She stares at the dead plant.

If her skin were a costume, she would
tear it off and never wear it again.
Instead of my mother’s nose,
she thinks she sees
my father’s stubble.
Not my mother’s dimpled smile
reflected back, but my
father’s Adam’s apple.
When we tell her she is
beautiful, she fiddles with her men-sized shoes.
We cannot convince her to
touch us when she is afraid to touch
herself.

We fit together: mother, daughter, daughter.
We sit at the island counter, playing
MarioKart on the kitchen TV,
talking about nothing really,
but to my sister it is
everything.
Our mother laughs like bells.
Who are we
but a part of her?

Three parts of water and oil

And one part of yellow grits

Salt and twenty minutes on the stove.

You don't have grits, throw in rice.

You don't have cornedbeef, throw in hamburguer

Or merguez mutton sausages. Or mix them both !

The secret ingredient of Scheharazade's Island Kitchen's Fire Engine is love.

She harbours in her smile

That grin of the kind of instant wild grits

Boiling for immediate bubbling,

Waters exploding from the ***,

Swelling, flowing, bursting,

Simmering until the point of bliss is reached.

And from an imperceptible move in her nostrils

You can guess the bulls in her cornedbeef mew the thyme of Heaven.

Her love is the kind of consistant batter

Blessed with okra, pumpkin and goat pepper.

Cooking in silence
on the stove-top
of my tiny kitchen.
Mixing broccoli and leeks.

I can feel the heat
from her eyes
swollen with rage.
Ocularly assailing

My words have drowned
in an ocean of
youthful trauma.

Her heart lost in dissension

Cockroach,  Cockroach , what are you doing in my soup,
In the kitchen I was playing hoop la hoop,
And I fell in you soup mister,
It's hot and I am getting blisters,
Scoop me with your spoon,
Before I swoon.
Please don't shout or scream,
I will be thrown out of the kitchen of my dream,
Filthy and messy,
With rotten fish, slimy and smelly,
Red meat in blood,
And fungi on sauces and salads with mould,
Never scrubbed,the kitchen,
For thousands of us it's heaven.
Be a pal,
Go away with your gal,
At least I did you a favour,
Not eating in this yucky place forever.
25/6/2019