Burnt Toast
Burnt Toast
Orange!
Hellish pastels screaming unknown genius and hint at hidden chortles
While nicotine nimbi scud and stain
And we suck slyly, slyly sweetened caffeine and wait for it to
reach crit mass in our body-plexus-pit
How’d we find this sticky formica stop anyway?
We iron out our cerebral wrinkles
Observe the threading warp and woof
And still can’t discern how we got in
Or where they hid the exit
So all you know is that its always open–
Isn’t this the graveyard shift?–
And the cross-eyed waitress will bring a misspelled, miscalculated
mistaken check when dinner’s over
whining whining wining and dining
Somebody waste that skinny kid if he won’t stop bellowing
Disagreeable distaste in distinct decibels
Disgusting!
The food may slither down your maw like greasy lint
But can’t we at least eat in peace?
A garish cosmos of flickering neon and cretin muzak
It seems as if everything was drawn from the maniac cook’s
Primordial soup
The proper proprietor leans in languishing linger leisure
Across the register
Smiling slightly as he strokes his beard, unconcerned
Christ! Is this morbid midnight meal a subtle jest
Or is he just plain stupid?
–Zumwalt (late 1970s or early 1980s)
zumpoems 