THE line cook BLUES

I know a world-class butcher but just don't have an appetite

Filet is for the birds and bosses who crave how its blood pools when cooked just right.

I have hair after 30 and I'm cautioned about it leaving me, less I keep it well-fed.

I have shame about my first 30 that I'm supposed to sunbathe in clinics or else, keep hid with hopes that make it dead.

From the feeling in my hand, I'm holding a spoon.

The buffet line is young but dem belly in full-bloom.

I have a big guitar pick but it scoops real flat

I have a big heart but is it supposed to feel fat?

I do love you 

But you aren't home.

I did call then

It says it in my phone.

I can't break a screen that needs thumbs to unlock

I can't build a window that soaks up tossed rocks.

Sleep is ambitious but go go go

Winter sky in June snow snow snow.

The sweatered singer who asks about weather 

Knows a song-writer who Instagrams tea and wears leather.

The former college athlete who rides the erg at dawn

Knows a walk-on college athlete who kept moving on

From tryout to scholarship to audition for the pros

"You know what they say, brother, row row row."

If I ask to see your tickets, volunteer to move

If they ax you for seconds, tell em wrong line for food.

"We hungry but them belly full" feels like a slave song

Short on paper but, with music, it can be strung into a good kind of long.

If it feels like a slave song, it would be weird if it was short

A deserving illustration of its various contorts.

Down Rodeo drive 

Its ponies now ride

Ponies of their own.

Upstream from there

Banks still let hide

Songs of the owned.

The splintered fingers of a line cook who never got trained

Reads the handwritten order of a liberal arts disciple for deskinned poultry blossomed in salt-free steel rain.

The food-hut slave holding down two jobs

Knows the son of his ex but forgets how she sobs

It's a distant thing to think about but he pretends to not know

"I ain't plant you in quicksand, boy, grow grow grow."