WORD CRUNCHER

By David Spicer

I’m thinking outside the bowl.

No more strawberries, cereal and cream

for this word cruncher. They’re not so super

anymore, plus the other day I told

myself a word braved is a word burned,

and a curd in the hand is worth two in the mush.

Suddenly you’re telling me to hush

hush, tweet starlet, that I can’t bowl

tonight? Is it something earned,

like dancing at the last concert by Cream

(or any other power-group, truth be cold),                                 

as long as I can stop by the super-

market before I scream Super! Super!

while I listen to Breaking in the Wind?

I think I’ll drop acid just to take a hold

of myself and get a bowl

haircut without shaving cream:

it’ll look good if the barber turns

my head just right, so it resembles an urn—

better yet, a Warhol can of soup, or

a plate of tacos, nachos and sour cream

with The Old Man Takes a Pee

nearby, that, for the tenth time today, bowls

me over more than To Whom the Mole Told.

But, one to eat crow and tell,

I admit I have a lesson to learn:

whenever I choose to write, my vowels

slay the lice, pretend they’re superior

to consonants that leak secrets from tushes,

though they can’t digest ice cream.

And I, their hungry owner, can only scream

when I blow my nose and not tell

you that a tart is a baloney hunter.

I might as well drink a smoothie of ferns

for breakfast, lunch, snacks and supper,

slurping it slowly, and from a bowl.

I love cream if it’s dour, if it’s burned.

That tells me it’s no longer bold or super,

but I covet crushed words crunched outside a bowl.

David Spicer has published poems in The American Poetry Review, CircleStreet, Gargoyle, Moria, Oyster River Pages, Ploughshares, Remington Review, Santa Clara Review, The Sheepshead Review, Steam Ticket, Synaeresis, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections, the latest two being American Maniac (Hekate Publishing) and Confessional (Cyberwit.net). His fifth, Mad Sestina King, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.