Conflicted

 

Conflicted

 

That hot sauce, I ordered with my pizza

last night will out, they say,

sauce will have sauce

and leads to thoughts of taste:

why, 20 years ago, enough to floor a horse

if my mouth were equine by nature.

I idly wonder, while clutching my belly

and beating a path to the bathroom,

machetes cleaving my guts in two,

if the chef was putting the laugh

on me – but, no, that surely cannot be

the person dipping his bread was me.

And some Uber driver on the way

was extolling the virtues of Sri Lankan holiday

because the voters there had spoken,

got rid of the wankers running the place,

replaced them with more grinning faces

no doubt. Armando switched tennis on –

we're talking Swan Lake and the Russian

ballet from Moscow –  that had performed

this time last week, I was torn,

conflicted, as the art ripped tears

that quickly dried; 'It's all one, they're just here.’

this side's that side's compromise.

Overseas, there's midterms;

the media speaks of heel face turns -

but I'm wondering what it is that blunts taste,

if age creates a tungsten tongue

that was not there when we were young,

while later on, their bellies burn.

Implacable, the old, old foes

each the other's weakness knows,

and pay no attention, tweet intention:

Half of us sue for peace

while the other half hunger for release -

and I wonder if any of them look up

and spot a flock of seagulls,

because they ran, they ran so far away

to drop their bombs between the minarets

down the casbah way.