Pencil People

(ca. 2008)

After the Rain

(June 2009)

A Meal You Will Regret

The trouble starts as soon as

You realize that your spoon has

Bits of dried, encrusted tunas,

And your knife and fork are spotty and unclean.

The soup is cold, congealed:

You smelled it once, and reeled,

And its skin cannot be peeled –

Though a whale might have more luck with its baleen.

The house dressing is vile,

For they make it out of bile.

The taste lingers quite a while

As you try to cleanse your palette, all in vain.

The potato's from the Famine –

Rather older than your Gram, and

Could have fed an Irish gamine,

But it selfishly decided to abstain.

The salad is all wilted,

Like a drooping maiden, jilted –

And the wine seems to be silted

With a substance that might better go unnamed.

The steak – both tough and flaccid –

Will abuse your stomach acid,

Though eventually you'll pass it...

In form and odor, very much the same.

Dessert? You really oughtn't-

An idea best forgotten,

For the cheesecake has gone rotten

And the tapioca never really set.

But sit down at your table,

Eat as much as you are able.

Is there a moral to this fable,

Or just a meal that you will regret?