No Love for Mustard

Mustard contest or fraternity dare?
The fact that you can't tell the difference
tells you everything

In the spirit of my other food sonnets, I have penned this one about my least favorite of the condiments, mustard. This one I wrote with some imagery help from Janessa, a well-read sixth-grader with equally disapproving tastebuds. If this poem pleases you, you might also enjoy the vituperation of another would-be food, white chocolate. Anyway, my apologies to all the mustard lovers out there. No, I take that back. I stand by the poem.

No Love for Mustard
by Gideon Burton

Let's just be honest: mustard is a slime,
a sour, gooey, beige-brown-yellow paste
ground up from foot-long garden slugs who dine
on maggot larvae and on cabbage waste.
That color --oh, so cheery. Neon fraud
disguising moldy pesto, eye of newt.
But go ahead and lather up your dog
or victim burger with that poison stew--
that con of condiments, a pretzel's bane,
that choice of kings (if kings have gone insane),
that turdy must that does all food profane,
that musty turd, so wrong except in name.
   If heaven's food is fair, then oh, not this--
   the bug guts Satan smothers on his grits.

image: creative commons licensed by Swamibu (Flickr)

White Chocolate: A Vituperation

Well, continuing with the same tone as yesterday's sonnet, I thought I'd express just how I feel about that great impostor known as "white" chocolate. Seriously. What sort of fraud is this? Anyway, another food sonnet for you.

White Chocolate: A Vituperation

by Gideon Burton

White chocolate, oh oxymoron foul,
No cocoa bean did bless your candy vat.
We chocoholics taste you and we howl.
What are you? An albino slab of fat,
Hydrogenized and sweetened past remorse,
Then peddled with hyperbole and fraud
To unsuspecting chocophiles, of course,
Who'd rather gargle liver oil from cod.
I've gnawed on better plastic in my day;
More flavor can be found between one's toes.
Perverse confection, fit to throw away,
Unworthy of my chocolate-sniffing nose.
     White chocolate, a joke not semisweet,
     Your coming means our end is near complete.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - kitchen wench

Pollen Count

Yesterday I posted a sonnet cheering the early arrival of Spring. But I must confess that I hate the Spring, notwithstanding all its potent symbols of new life. Hate it. For me Spring means two very dreadful things: 1) the end of the skiing season; and 2) the beginning of allergies. I don't know how I make it from one glorious Winter to another. It makes me miss living in Quebec, where it was either Winter, or July. But in any case, here's a snarky little sonnet about my greatest biological enemy.

Pollen Count

by Gideon Burton

A froth of pungent pollen floating wet

upon the afternoon swells up its tide

then crashes over us, a sticky sweat

both rough and smooth, it sinks and glides

along the porous tissues of the eyes

until its claws invisible with hate

make clenching holds, they seize with dark surprise

the hottest triggers of our quickest fate.

I wash my hands my throat my face my sight

my mind a haze of mucous pressured fast

against the walls of swelling cells whose blight

of blood makes dying seem a sweet repast

     For I am eaten, chewed with spring’s attack

     and curse the world that frost and snow will lack.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - gravitywave