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Spaghetti Poem
There’s this raw spaghetti idea
two feet long or more
pale, brittle, uncooked, spiny
all those adjectives that
you’ve been taught to avoid
How to fit it into a poem,
cook it down to something edible
tasty even and you’ve only
got about ten minutes
You could
break it into
make it into
six inch
standard lengths
of repetitious
rhyme scheme
Or slip it slowly, sublime as sensuous
softly swimming sibilant eels that
curve and curl like cables in
undulating wanderings until they
slip-slop heapingly from page to palate
You consider
chopping it into
un equal
randomly distributed
pieces
like they do
in some trendy
modern magazines
In the end you settle for
the style that you’re accustomed to
that bolognaise the kids adore
some meaty phrases, ketchupped through
And for yourself you grill a cutlet
and for dessert, a rhyming couplet
© Johnmichael Simon
2009
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