Television cooks rarely do
Fish, chips and mushy peas
With spotted **** for afters.

No
It’s got to be
Creamy coconut curry
With Balingud Zalud
Soaked in Chimichurri sauce.

Or Jalapena Lime Slaw
Accompanied by spicy Sriracia mayo
And Rachero Sauce.
Plus a side-dish of fluffy soufflés.

The starter is a vibrant veggy ratatouille
With sashimi, tacos and tortillas.

But then there’s always vemuelli noodles,
Pommes frittes
Teriyehi
Thana messala
And Enchilada Casserole
Covered in Romesco Sauce
Or Hollandaise
With Falafels and couscous.
Then Neapolitan Ice Cream souffled Erotica.

All impossible of course.
But don’t we love
The sheer seduction of those Words.

Paul Butters

© PB 28\4\2020.

writing a poem about falafels wouldn’t
be like writing a poem about love,
or death,
or even ideas.

writing a poem about a seamless dress wouldn’t
be like writing a poem about marriage,
or faith,
or even divorce.

actually-
it’d be like writing a poem
about a poem,
but not.

it’d be like listening to music for
sound,
sound like a screen door slapping
shut,
kicking up years of dust in a room,
a room with a floor that held feet
from nothing it could know,
but nothing the floor didn’t know,
dust the door thought it knew,
a facade of spew the not knowing
found important enough
to write a poem about.

In the Village you get the tang of dead pennies and vinyl
spinning on your Bourbon tongue
and everything’s ***** Roscoe with the jump kids
on Broad Street and the Blacks
polishing rimshots off of stars they can’t see.
Hubcaps vanish like wallets at a crosswalk-
and the rain smells like iron
binging Detroit with fume Kabuki
as falafels alight upon the caverns of asphalt
like a flock of agnostic Finch
migrating to the Temple
of your Migraine.

She’s gone now and nothing can stop you
from becoming a ghost, unless your letters
were never written on purpose
and your absence was the
Plan.

The Jungle is a
stainless steel fog
of Blown Cover
in a war on the
Senseless.

You can’t catch
a Breath
without Catching
Hell
in the Bargain
with a Devil
You Know-

Will Leave.

Wide-eyed, face down,
nose in the grass,
purples and oranges
greens and reds,
three blades
for the price of one,
each waving and weaving
their lurid patterns
drawn in an
ethereal sequence -
beyond the field's edge
Van Morrison whisper-sings...

"Last night she came to me
my young love came in
so softly she entered
that her feet made no din..."

Lightheaded, floating through
corridors of tents and stalls
flicker-lit by torches, cigarettes,
small fires, glow sticks
and the moon leading
legions of galaxies and stars
across heaven murked
in smoke and smells
from woks and charcoals.

"She stepped away from me
and she moved through the fair
Where hand-slapping dealers'
loud shouts rent the air..."

Treading discarded cartons
of half-eaten, sloppy noodles
and greasy falafels
served by tattooed chefs,
long-haired hippies
with vegetarian gifts
and small brown crystals
for unsuspecting urbanites,
weekend adventurers
seeking trips where trips should
never be allowed to go...

"The sunlight around her
did sparkle and play..."

Faces loom in and out;
girls with smiles, tight pants
and bandoliers of jaeger bombs,
boys swaying in their silent dance
with cans of pale ale held high,
faces flickering in the light,
glistening glitter-glint grins,
painted in greens, reds and
purples, the air acrid
and sharp
with josh and sweat

"I dreamt last night
of that far away day,
your hair spread golden
on the ground where we lay..."

Dancing alone under
a cloudless sky;
the moon, now tripled in size,
assumes a lucidity,
a pearl white clarity,
as if purity itself
and time, time, time
has lost all meaning.

"you stepped high
as you move through the fair..."
and fondly I watch as you
move here and move there,
you went your way homeward
with one star awake
as the swan in the evening
moves over the lake..."