Late Tuesday Poem!

Petition to the Muse 

 Once you dangled frittered metaphors
from the tips of silver spoons,
glazed my lips with rhyme and wit,
nogged me silly with saucy sentences.
Apricots, adjectives, angel food, adverbs.
Every day -- chiffon and streusel, allspice
and whiskey-vanilla. A dazzling consumption,
a poetry-case of divinity, carmelized and meringued.

And then,
you took the cake out of the oven,
tipped the thermometer from roiling syrup.
(We were not quite to the hard-ball stage.)
The springform sprung.
The custard slipped.
The ink blanched from my pen.
I was chilled but not quite set.

You changed diction mid-stanza
and life became boiled cabbage and potatoes.
Wilted lettuce, no salt.
Oil gone rancid. Liver
and stewed mutton. Non-fat.
A single wizened apple.

You left me
a pantry of garlic skins, corn husks.
A drawerful of dull blades
and a measure of nothing to fill the page.

O come back, garnishes and buttercreams,
puff paste and puddings —
fill me up with fondant, roll me
a cookie, bake me an Alaska —
just once more -- make me a tarte
for poetry!
 

© T. Clear 2012

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