Bully Beef

 

Bully Beef

 

Words - lost in time, but appropriated –

canned meat, packed and salted,

you might call them jellied tins

and there’s a key, to shred aluminum

and skin – no matter how much

care you take you end with a bunch

of shrewd strip metaled spirals.

Where do they end or begin?

Let’s spend some time considering

Chips - vinegar enough to outsmart

and sting – leave Beefy with the tart

taste of defeat by the time the strip’s

done. But he’s young and has won –

hefted sabres of success and run

circles around the protagonist.

‘You’re disorganized!’ you hissed,

in frustration, the last time

he’s left his pencil case outside

those four walls of learning, blocked

the lesson for the nth time, rocked

your coiled up serpent temper

a veritable, God’s honest class preventer.

Maybe, as an aged mentor,

you did indeed, pluck him by cuffs,

bully him firmly to chairs enough

to thrust in front of surly books.

But there were sullen looks

from beneath his fringe and he ached

to revenge for revenge’s sake –

more than capable to demonstrate

that all that’s canned up within

can become barbed and salty in its tin.