Appetiser

Do you know what they use to make meatballs, Daniel?
Tongues of liars, my boy,
and the gut strings of snaggle-toothed cats
that mew stray through the slough bins
of grease-runnelled restaurants, where barons
and triple-chinned gluttons chew caves
into festering, nose-bleeding cowskulls
and meatballs, my boy,
they eat meatballs!

Do you realise the cruelty of pasta, Daniel?
Corpses' eyelids, my child,
left to fatten in vats of the oystery sputum
of rheumy-eyed paupers with mouthfuls of ulcers,
and boils like clusters of bulging ripe berries,
who shudder then die and a man wielding scissors
comes by and he snips through the veil of each eye
cutting pasta, my child,
making pasta!

Did you think sauce was come by benignly, Daniel?
Ask your parents, my lad,
making love in a dim-bulbed hotel on the Tropic
of Cancer where boggle-eyed geckos all ogle
the slobbering swell of your sweat-stippled mother,
and bedsprings make noises like jackasses braying,
disturbing the padre who next door is praying
'til God can no longer make out what he's saying
'til sauce from your father is coming, is spraying,
it's torture, my lad,
making children.

Why do you poke at your food so, Daniel?
Has your appetite gone?
Slide your platter to me,
that your uncle may save you from wasteful disgrace
while you sit and let colour return to your face.
'Though the soul of an infant is free from defects
an old stomach enjoys what a young one rejects.'