Fruit – A Poem about Mad Desire
©April 6th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
What draws me isn’t just the actual fruit
You understand.
No, it’s the thought of fruit,
Its connotation, its symbolism
Its scents twining their arms about me,
Its hidden erotic profiles.
What draws me is all that is around it.
Yes, it’s the nature of fruit
To entice, to shame, to delight
To condone, to console, to
Stimulate, to make one swoon
With desire and dreaming-want.
What draws me is the symmetry
The perfection of an apple, where
Enticement and danger embrace,
And a sorry knowledge comes
With every bite – the knowledge
That this too, will end.
It’s the clustering of grapes
The mad, symmetric glistening
Globes of tight flesh encased in
Purple, or green, or red skin
That draws me in, like a humming
Bee which, though sated with juice
And nectar, and sunlight and pleasure,
Still gets pulled in by mere desire.
Its the bright, cheerful sunlit
Blips of orange packed so tightly
Into a globe, surrounded by an
Unwelcoming, reluctant, tangy
Skin, dissuading mere temporaries
From opening up its secrets.
Those are for me, only me.
And figs so purple-achy, and melons so round,
And dates, dense with brown sweetness
And jackfruit poky outside, succulent within,
And Indian jamuns, so tart and violet
And peaches, squishy and laden with juice
And plums the same, but deeper, darker,
And clementines, flirty sun-cousins to oranges,
And green, uncertain pears, both raw and ripe,
And summer berries and fall berries,
Red and blue, and crimson in hue,
Full of nectar, full of welcoming.
And every fruit that ever guarded
Its progeny jealously, possessively,
Yields up its secrets to me,
The lover at the heart of it all.
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From the prompt for NaPoWriMo Day 6:
Today, I challenge you to write a poem about food. This could be a poem about a particular food, or about your relationship to food in general. Or it could simply be a poem relating an incident that involves food …