"beets" poems
He struts down the sidewalk
With a hint of a frown
His spoon swings beside him
Jaunty hat as his crown.
Childers peep with a gasp
As they watch him strut down
The musk that follows him
The stains on his gown.
There he goes, they whisper,
As the sun settles down
The Badass Chef, they say,
Of this Badass Town.
He pounds dough to a pulp
Whisking eggs beyond shape
Beets up on the salad
Stomping vatfulls of grape.
Skewers meat without thought
Chops neat through a bone
Flays sharks without care
Needs no sous, works alone
The Badass Chef
Of this Badass Town.
He hangs up his cleaver
At the end of the day
Dripping droplets of what
None have courage to say
He blows out his flambe
Spoon back at his side
Turns back to his war zone
Fists clenched with quiet pride
There he goes, they whisper,
As the sun settles down
The Badass Chef
Of this Badass Town.
Jan 29, 2018
Jan 29, 2018 at 2:46 PM UTC
Beets are Greatly Misunderstood
They Make sugar from them...
Because they're Sweet
All kinds of Treats
Candy, Cookies and Ice cream
Doughnuts, Cake and Pralines
Girl Scout Cookies and Frosty Shakes
You should Salute the Beet for all it Makes
I hope I opened your eyes to
All the things that Beets can do
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 11:01 AM UTC
Splish splash
The waves crash on the sandy shore
Attracted to the ground up rocks
Like children to lollipops
Or bees to flowers.
Splish splash
The waves are getting fierce
Rain is starting to pour
Like a child with a hose
Spraying their brother on a warm summer day.
Splish splash
The waves are like skyscrapers
Towering above me
Maybe I should go; I’m all alone now.
Splish splash
The waves have formed into one
One giant wave covering my island
I run away, up the mountain.
Splish splash
The devastation is done
The buildings lie everywhere
So do the bodies
I am the only survivor.
Why
Why did I survive and not the wise old man down the street
Why not the old merchant who only sold oranges and beets
What would father say?
I know
I know what he would say
He would say, “Because you are you and no one else is you. That’s why you survived.”
Now he is gone
Splish splash
The waves are calm again
Attracted to the sandy shore
Like children to lollipops
Or bees to flowers
Mar 19, 2010
Mar 19, 2010 at 3:15 PM UTC
A rhombus is my favorite, crooked square.
I like haunted houses with windows with faces
and fun houses with mirrors that oval circles
that distort my body two hundred degrees.
I like haunted houses with doors at right angles,
and half moon neon protractors
that blur every shape zero degrees.
I like cubes I stack four cubes high.
I like half moon neon protractors
and scientific calculators.
I like cubes I stack ten cubes high
and old houses with ceilings that creak.
I like scientific calculators
and dividing eight billion by pi.
I like old houses with ceilings that creak
with cylindrical cans filled with old beets.
I like dividing eight billion by pi
and fun houses with mirrors that stretch right angles.
I like old houses with crooked windows,
like I said a rhombus is my favorite.
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 9:40 PM UTC
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, “Why not?”
In casting about for a corner
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, “Just it.”
And he said, “That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.”
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load.
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but ****
A hill each of potatoes,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, “I know!
It’s as when I was a farmer——”
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
3.5k
Black- soil-stained hands,
Weaklings at my feet,
Today we thin beets
So the others grow strong.
The beet is my spirit animal
In food form, but
Not the weak kind-
I am the strong one that is good enough
to eat.
The beet is discrete
The beet is a vicious vegetable
The beet is humble, *****
Beneath most humane things
The beet is ugly, absurdly
Colored.
I often wonder how it could be natural
But the I remember Hell is natural too.
I dream of beets
They are at dusk and dawn
In the desert monsoons,
In menstrual cycles,
In the blood of my enemies I want to slaughter,
Then taste.
When I roast and handle my beets, they are the
blood on my hands I can't rinse off
The black soil remains under my nails indefinitely
When I’ve forgotten about the beet,
The beet has not forgotten nor forgiven
me
I **** and **** and spit red
The beet never leaves me
Beet, please, never leave me.
Mar 3, 2016
Mar 3, 2016 at 10:45 PM UTC
No sickle bar churns
repetitiously clanging two notes
while grasshoppers and field mice
scurry to survive the blade
Now yellow bulldozers with humongous tires
roar like thunder in a rainstorm and
scrape away black loam leaving
clay as red as fresh beets
There is no funeral for the hay meadow
that is dead and put to rest
without a tombstone
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 9:24 AM UTC
Never forget
there is poetry in dirt
in greens, in beets,
especially in rutabagas.
Three-dollar-a-bag spinach,
you are a symphony of compost
with which an old man’s teeth are smitten;
Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor
you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written
in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water
where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which elate
that you are part of a song
which sings every year
a little louder.
My beautiful, daredevil vegetables,
This coming September, I will miss you dearly.
I will be days of travel away from your world of roots, of mist,
of six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain
which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks
all over my bare feet, that you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes,
that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers
after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten miracles
to whom I have given baptism in shallow plastic tubs of water
floating like elations of fire
in the grayness of the morning.
Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it
& if you can hear the water swishing inside,
if you can make a maraca of its innards,
then give it back to the dirt.
This is the wisdom of peppers:
when you grow soft
when you have been chosen
& plucked,
& washed
& thoroughly loved
& shaken,
when you have called out like fire
beside your brothers in a basin,
lay down in the compost
the kindly compost,
& listen, just listen,
(there will be nothing left to do
but listen)
to the poetry of dirt.
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 4:15 PM UTC
A Pickle is Many Things
A Kosher Dill, A Gherkin
You can Pickle Beets and
You can pickle pigs feet
Pickles for Bread and Butter
Sweet Pickles Canned by Mother
Pickled Herring can be found or
Pickled Eggs that are so round
A Pickle's a fine thing to be
But...don't get yourself in a Pickle
All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 11:42 AM UTC
Dinner with Dr. Lecter,
has always been a treat,
we usually start at the head,
then work our way down to the feet.
With every serving yummy,
he cooks with perfect ease,
whether it be brains sauteed in parsley,
or fresh liver and fava beans.
The Doctor's quite a master,
at innovative culinary feats,
and nothing beats a side of ****
served up with home-grown beets!
____________
Fava beans and a nice Chianti, anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlkZVAw8Gc
Oct 6, 2010
Oct 6, 2010 at 4:26 AM UTC
I never liked beets; too soft, too red
too round, too bulbous,
too much like a bloodmoon.
I cannot live in these shaman
sleeves. They're heavy as rocks beneath
the waves, soaked to the bone
by a salty, sunless sea. Too much
blue is bleeding into billowing wool, red as beet.
There's never an anglerfish
when you need a light, no beetbulb of flame
for that last rush of smoke before the black
undercurrent squeezes the air too thin.
May 5, 2016
May 5, 2016 at 4:37 AM UTC
a late harvest in Brigadoon
plucked from good earth
by strong hands
hauling
uphill, until
a gentle
slope
rewards
a stiff
back; easing
a grateful
burden
that levitates
famine
[ bushels ]
now
ziggarats
in a root
cellar
a Sumerian skyline
of parsnips and rhubarb
with fennel minarets
where Gilgamesh slept
in a pantry of pagan loot
underneath a corner room
at the very back
of a round
house.
where four seasons bunk with an almanac
mason jars of pickled beets
breathing their own blood
hanging gardens from the ceiling
of the Underworld
like fliers of missing children
on telephone poles
i go outside and wander off
you stay home
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 2:02 AM UTC
I say my grace behind gritted teeth and furled brow.
The anger in me; pent-up somehow.
To vow my soul since child's belief.
Forced upon me like broccoli and beets.
Taught to believe and not to suspect; that what they tell me are lies about death.
Jul 3, 2013
Jul 3, 2013 at 6:00 PM UTC
11-11-11- past 11a.m.
I missed it.
I wanted for me what happened to my friend
in Australia
She was walking down the street and at
11-11-11- 11a.m.
almost everyone around her
took a bow to such powerful numbers
11-11-11-11a.m.
(Perhaps we shall be saved she said)
Today, my 11-11-11, I was shopping for my lovers feast;
Hummus and crispy organic veggies
Fresh beets and pure ****** olive oil
Local goat cheese to die for
My phone alarm rang letting me know it was 11:10
(I did not hear it) as I was talking to Max my grocer
About:
Just picked Arugula and sweet Irish butter
(To mound a top San Francisco sour dough)
He hinted to me not to miss out
On:
Butternut squash and meaty pomegranates
"A lucky omen" he said, "on a day like today."
“What do you mean A day like today?” I said
“Well it’s 11-11-11” he smiled
“Oh my goodness” I faintly cried (almost too loud),
“I missed it!” (I saw the time on the wall where I was shopping)
“Missed what?” he said
"Missed out on experiencing 11-11-11-11.a.m."
“Oh my dear you missed nothing”, he said as he reached toward me with
A huge ripe pomegranate. I felt flush from wanting something
that now seemed so gone.
“No”, Max pointed out, “you have more than feeling a set of numbers
In the movement of the day”,
“You were here planning a feast for a loved one
(yes I told him it was a lovers dinner)
What could be more in acknowledging the power of life
Than love?”
I said nothing as I beamed and took that pomegranate and
Ohhhh
I felt so good.
Linaji 2011
(an almost true story)
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 6:05 PM UTC
A baby from Burundi sits next to me today.
He coos and drinks and swallows his mother’s milk.
His father speaks Swahili. Smiles, tells me that his last son
Is going to grow old in Rochester, NY,
Where I sit in a white-walled waiting room, watching
Mothers drag their babies by the armpits to be weighed.
A boy with braided beads holds up four fingers and tells me he is five.
He is too skinny. His pants are sagging and his iron is low.
His mother takes his vegetable checks, stuffs them into the back pocket of her jeans.
What the little **** needs is two percent milk, she says,
Her gold hoops fluttering.
Her son struggles with the small wooden chair he is carrying.
It drags along the carpet, hitting the high spots, and his tiny biceps flinch.
He sits, facing me, while a name is called. And another.
Another woman’s son hands me a book and waits.
He is watching my face and I watch his mother kiss her boyfriend in the first row seats.
He tucks his chin to his chest when I ask his name. Whispers, tells me Jayden.
First page. What color is Elmo, Jayden?
Shoulders shrugging. His lower lip, puckered out and innocent.
What color is he, Jayden?
The color of Jayden’s skin slaps me across the heart when he says he doesn’t know.
He was born in Rochester, NY,
With trash bags and Burger King wrappers wrapped around the fence
That separates his house from the street on which he will grow old
Too soon.
He starts kindergarten in the fall and I tell him Elmo is red, like his t-shirt.
Like his mother’s fingernails.
Like the tomatoes and bell peppers and beets he has never seen.
A girl who went to my High School carries in her youngest child
Who is old enough to walk, but wobbles.
She calls her daughter “thunder-thighs” instead of Jazmyne
And strips off her shoes. Her belt. Her gold bracelets.
The scale says Jazmyne is too heavy for food assistance.
The state says her mother isn’t poor enough for welfare.
The girl I used to know leaves without her daughter’s shoes or the food checks she came for.
In conversations of pretension
We talk about first and third world.
Pretend that America is the land of second chances
Where a baby from Burundi can grow old in cashmere sweaters,
Even when his parents couldn’t pay.
The father who speaks Swahili looks at his shiny watch and his family’s vegetable checks.
Smiles. Tells me his last son is going to grow old and full
In Rochester, NY.
Jun 10, 2010
Jun 10, 2010 at 12:51 PM UTC
Outside, but not so far away,
Missiles are falling;
Early snow has settled
Beneath gray overcast....
Sirens in the distance
Send their low moan
Across the miles...
Echo faintly in our canyon.
Too cold for lightning,
We turn away from light
Flickering or flashing
Upon the bellied skies...
Don't want to think
About the thundering
The light implies.
Muffled sound and muted light
Confirm our living
Away from town.
Perhaps we are
Far enough....
These days, though,
Places to run are few,
And war is moving out.
At least the news has stopped....
Was sporadic
Then...
Stopped altogether
Now.
Almost a relief....
The coal oil lamp -
Her mother's mother's -
Burns a reddish glow...
Diesel's charring smudge...
Comforts us
In a growing dark.
Roast potatoes,
Rabbit stew,
Pickled beets...
No bread this time
As I uncork chokecherry wine...
And it is summer 1999....
We are standing in tall grass
Somewhere between Red Lodge
And Laurel along the road,
Ice cream pails echoing
With plopping chokecherries
Near black and hanging thick
Like miniature clusters of grapes.
We are there to beat the birds and bears,
Knowing choke-cherrying
Is the hurried work of many races,
Some wearing claws upon their heavy hands,
Others flitting in with beaks upon their faces.
And then the kitchen smells of cherries boiling down
For syrups and for jam,
The old ten gallon glass fermenting juice and sugar,
Stands waiting in the corner,
Later to be filtered off and corked away
In twice-used bottles....
Other years and other picking times
Lie bottled in wooden racks below,
But we have chokecherry wine tonight,
While storms we never thought we'd know
Blow hard against the world.
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 7:08 AM UTC
Loading the bowl and packing it tight
Take a rip off this chronic delight
Let your mind soar, weave and wander
Relax, hold it in just a bit longer
Let the spirit of the bud fill your lungs
Ghost it, ballpark, have a little fun
Feel your eyes droop low, streaked with red
When suddenly your stuck, you can't get out of bed
Your tummy starts to grumble, your mouth grows dry
You stumble towards the kitchen and eat an entire pie
You move towards cabinets laden with sweets
You eat the saltines, canned corn and canned beets
You devour all the candy, you inhale all the fruits
You head towards the fridge and receive some bad news
The milks gone sour, and there's nothing to drink
Your mouth is so dry and you can't even think
Water is flavorless and wine is too strong
Getting so desperate, take a swig off the ****
Ew, that's too gross, I'm sure you'll survive
But next time this happens, keep a soda near by
Oct 2, 2010
Oct 2, 2010 at 11:37 AM UTC
chopping the leaves off the onions
scent trailing them into the garbage
the beets stain the hands ****** purple
potatoes and carrots
as the first summer of our togetherness
gives its fruits
to us and to our children
and your child’s unborn child
marching on from the winter of our stony beginnings
and our spring storms of anger and hurt
big cabbage head heavy and firm
like your head on my belly
in the middle of the night
vegetables on the picnic table
and in your tub
clean the potatoes then
give me your love
Feb 6, 2010
Feb 6, 2010 at 10:07 PM UTC
Planting excitement upon us,
My daughter asks how to thin the beets.
"When the plants are three inches tall,
Pick the weaker ones and pull them up,"
I say. "You'll take out two thirds of the young plants
So the rest can grow."
I see a troubled look upon her face,
And realize what I find in myself....
The teacher's quandary:
Picking whom to keep,
Whom to cull...
We put our love into them all.
Watching for first and tender shoots,
Celebrating as the fledgling leaves appear,
Not thinking of a time ahead,
Dreaded time to thin....
Teachers are reluctant to cull,
Building emotional connection,
Providing loving direction,
Promising success to all....
Then come the standardized tests,
The team selections,
The popularity contests,
The invitations to slumber parties,
The division of elites,
The rising of divas,
The rostering of first teams...
The separation of pariahs begins,
The promise we made to early learners ends,
Superiors, exultant, drown out the tears
Of those left standing by the fence,
Excluded from the chances to advance.
Standing in the seedling beds,
Spring breezes rustling tender leaves,
I turn to Kate....
"It's never easy....
But if we don't thin the beets,
The beets will not develop
Beneath the leaves."
These damnable analogies arise
Infrequently these days,
And I am standing in the dirt,
Black soil upon on my hands,
Wondering about survival of the weak,
The treatment of humans and young plants,
Pondering humane ways to honor every student
In which I am investing...
Wishing I could see the end of high stakes testing....
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 12:29 PM UTC
There once was a fight on my plate
In front of my face while I ate
The Broccoli on the left picked up its Spear
And stabbed the Corn on the right, right in the Ear
The Avocado Artichoked the Zucchini
Before the Pepper rang the Bell on that meanie
The Onion went to Bed on the Lettuce and cried
Afraid that the Beets on the side were all Red cause they died
The Okra came in and slimed the whole affair
While the Yams slammed and Squashed the Cauliflower
The Peas ended up with Black Eyes
Next to the Potatoes that were mashed up and fried
The Cabbage brought it all to a head
Which Steamed the Asparagus with all that was said
There once was a fight on my plate
In front of my face while I ate
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 8:54 AM UTC
“You tell that man that I’ve no more desire to speak with him than I would the devil himself!”
“You tell that man that I am very upset that he would come in here and interrupt this afternoon’s bingo game!”
“I mean, honestly!”
The administrator of
the nursing home looked at me nervously.
I looked back,
apologetic,
but undaunted.
“I just need information.”
“I need to know if she has any plans to go back home.”
“I need to know that if she does go home, she’ll have the proper equipment and support system in place, waiting for her when she arrives.”
The administrator walked back
toward the facility’s dining hall,
where the bingo game was in full swing.
(The executive whispered into an ear.)
A pair of elderly, cataract-laden eyes rolled,
then glared at me with a hostility that I could feel,
even all the way over by the nurse's station.
“The lady says that she plans to stay with us.”
I nodded, said my thanks, and walked back out into the cold.
This part of the job is always a bit surreal.
It makes me think of my mother.
She was the director of several nursing homes over the course of my youth.
The smells of these facilities is assaultive.
(Industrial cleaning products,
boiled vegetables,
assorted liniments and balms,
the faintest twinge of ***** in the nostrils.)
To me these places smell like memories
that go for long periods,
unrecalled,
unrecounted.
(School-age summers
spent in supply rooms,
marking supplies,
stacking them neatly,
like troops ready for deployment.)
Often the nursing home
is thought to be a horrendous destination.
I can understand that.
But, she wanted to stay
and I had interrupted the bingo game,
hadn’t I?
Tonight’s supper was roasted chicken,
mashed potatoes,
pickled beets on the side.
(I’d read as I’d entered.)
Maybe her sons and daughters
didn’t want her anymore.
Maybe they’d visit every afternoon at 4.
There was no way I’d ever know again for sure.
But, I know why this afternoon’s task
made me smile,
stinging at the same time.
Because I’m Cynthia’s son.
***
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018
Dec 1, 2018
Dec 1, 2018 at 1:55 PM UTC
Kale greens. Beets grow fat and wine-dark.
Carrots spin sun into fibrous orange.
Someone carried soil up these stairs.
Onions open long fingers into the morning fog.
Small herbs and winter squash keep quiet company
here on the rooftop while sirens pass below.
In the afternoon one or two leave their e-mail
and ascend to this improbable place.
“Put your hands into the dirt,” a doctor advised,
and you’ll feel better.” There is a time to plant
and a time to reap. A time when nature, nearly
spent, needs tending in small places.
Boat-weary immigrants lay bok choy along
the sidewalk’s edge. Geraniums bloom
in window boxes. Here and there
insistent chilis dangle on a bush in a half-
barrel. A rooftop is world enough for now.
You don’t need forty acres or a mule.
A few square yards, drip line, a couple
of spades and willing hands suffice.
The rest is blessing.
Jun 19, 2017
Jun 19, 2017 at 11:21 AM UTC
(A Song to Me)
Write your love inside your eyelids, cast verses on
Sweet violets.
I have drawn for you a map
Of story and of song.
Point your feet toward the sea, take it with you when you’ve gone.
Each hand will carve the other.
For this is all there is to know of love;
Two beings carving one another.
Presented as a present, all wrapped and tucked and clean,
Tied with dandelion string,
Clothed in cream-colored linen, walking near the ocean,
The taste of a faraway notion, this
Is all there is to know of love.
A room of books, a room of birds,
A line to hang your dresses and your sheets,
Brass bowls of tangerines,
Willow-bark dreams.
Inside, even the snow is sweet.
This is all there is to know of love.
Sad selves sold soft to willing souls, we are
Only a little drunk, not like last time,
Or the time before.
We are milk and we are honey, we are coffee in the morning,
Our soil is rich and never rocky,
The sky is clear and often sunny,
Good rains fall each year, and the weather changes slow
So our gardens always grow.
We eat tomatoes from the vines,
Read our fortunes in the lines
On palms that have been calloused by our years
Of digging through the dirt in our past loves’ chests, darling, someday you will rest.
Each love will be a map for the you that is to come,
Each loss will be a song.
This is all there is to know of love.
You will walk a thousand sunshines, let your hair grow long, until
Someday,
Hands stained red with beets, you’ll be laughing in a kitchen with your lover,
You will sleep in tangled sheets.
You’ll have smile lines, clear eyes, and freckles on your arms.
Someday, a wraparound porch,
A trickling stream,
The sound of little feet.
Smiling, always smiling, you are everything that beats.
You are everything that sings.
This is all there is to know of love.
Jan 22, 2014
Jan 22, 2014 at 2:15 AM UTC
How about that gasoline
in Autumn rain puddles?
How about them cars that don't start,
can't start.
I just wanted to start.
Playing games like this never amused me much;
I guess I'm more of a reader than a writer than a toy-game-player.
I want the facts.
None of this horseshit media circus,
ignorance is neither knowing nor caring.
Nay bliss,
It was bliss on those cold winter nights,
night twilights pressed hard against the city-smogged sky
where the gases of sugar beets and petroleum reflect back down orange.
Orange on the snow and orange on snow drifts and snow flakes on your eyelashes.
Little orange dusts
**** your lashes grow long)*
dusts fallen halfheartedly like rain in the fall
and rain puddles shone red
and blue
and green
and orange, orange, orange...
Always orange.
Like gasoline in rain puddles,
gasoline in cars that won't start.
They can't start, don't start;
My engine must be misfiring.
(How about them metaphors for a heart?)
Will you call me when you get there?
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
the beets are looped in grass,
the squash is on our plate,
the river runs so smooth,
while the rapids take their break.
the trees begin to sway,
at the slightest hint rain,
but there’s nothing we can do,
there’s nothing we can say.
my toes begin to curl,
when the fan is turned on high,
your heart begins to race,
when the bullets hit your thigh.
the sauerkraut,
and carrot sticks,
are never done on time,
leaving us the thoughts,
of a dream world gone awry.
there’s nothing I have heard you say,
that will take away the pain,
there’s nothing you have done,
to close this little gate.
my trust is so gullible,
to the sound of open arms,
your deception was the pawn,
that swept this poor king’s heart.
forced upon my knees,
with a trademark on my arm.
there has got to be a way,
to remove this purple yarn.
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 4:24 AM UTC