The Tao of Taco Salad

Greasy, browned, and chili’d beef,
Seasoned and dripping, auburn
With cayenne, and tomato, and onion, and mostly salt:
Saturating the crispy shell bottom.

Shredded, yellowed iceberg leaf,
Drenched, ribboned filler of space.
Providing the gruesome illusion of healthiness:
Oleaginous vegetal distraction.

Sharp cheddar jack and sour cream,
Dolloped, cast, and clumping mass:
Creamy , soothing salves, tongue-tickling cool diversions
From the warm and spicy protean guts.

Salsa fresca, rough-chopped japs,
Minced or sauced, mildly-kicking,
A palate-consternating flaming glue and tinting force:
Power in each otherwise feckless bite.

Alas, the edible bowl:
Golden-crisped, corned and flaky,
Fleetingly contains, embraces then disintegrates
Into bygone crumby reminiscence.

Pennies on Edges

Pick a number,

     Any number

     Between one and two.

Either headless,

     Or tailless too,

     The choice is yours, see:

You can’t be wrong,

     You just can’t.

     Wrong is not an option.

The Party

If there was ever a time when you loved me
I never knew it.

Instead, with abundant caution
     I loved us (both).
The time we spent, the things we did
     Passed, without.
What we made was never real,
     Artifice.

What we made was never real,
     Just shadows,
          Dancing on the wall
          Behind a loveless flame.