PLANT-BASED BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
You let me borrow Breakfast of Champions After the second date.
We watched the gardener next door Pick their crops, and I confess that I just found out Coriander and cilantro are the same thing.
Succulents typically grow on newly plucked leaves, And you have many of sizes and shapes Adorning your windowsills.
Your back is fertilized with sweat, And I plant kisses on you Hoping something beautiful will grow.
Something like Coriander or cilantro or especially mint Because every time I kiss you, I feel fresh.
April showers supposedly bring May flowers, But I cried ecstacy beside you in mid-May, Planted upon you, in bloom.
My soil used to be sprinkled in lead Ignoring the Surgeon General’s warnings. You replace my coping mechanisms with your green thumb.
You help me remember my Breakfast of Champions Isn’t you plucking my cherries.
It’s waking up next to your back With minute saplings sprouting And you accepting my bad metaphors.
It’s Vonnegut rolling in his grave Six feet below Our lack of sarcasm and irony.
It’s the gravestone where my Six feet deep of mistakes Drown with vines against the limestone.
It’s completely forgetting I was once lead And excited that there are new chapters to start.
I haven’t started reading Breakfast of Champions Because I am finishing Mother Night.
Leafing through this other Vonnegut book, Swaying with the cast shadows of branches, Lulling to sleep in a new story where I am
Patching a nest in your arms, Uprooting myself from cynicism, And planting kisses on your cheek
Confident in someone beautiful.