VIETNAMESE FOOD
Like tender shoots tremble end over end
Over the precise and smooth expanse bend
Alone in the crowded fields of lemon grass
Like an ever-growing and cropping range
Of discarded lime sighs in greedy impasse
Prostrated to the unctuous task
Spread deceitful under a film of musk
Mere incarnate stirrings beneath feathery coals
And sprays of froth and acid cyclic rage
Spewing the ecstatic surge upon breathy shoals
Falsely stolid graces beguile anew
Pinched lemon melting on down bitter grew
The twisted and pale-yellow skins with sour tips
Languid droop in prolonged melodious flow
Pegged with crafty blacks arranged like musical quips
The proud crane could not be but down was brought
Fluttering with preparatory heaves
Framed by black feathers aglow in a field of snow
A silken kite -- a darkly shining site
Amid a shivering shadow of shimmering white
Spicy and craved -- a demure tail is sought
Gelatinous white carved with feather leaves
Grazing a dank pitted paddy, grain rising in sight
Neatly assembled burn the auburn reeds
Straight stalks lining along adorn the newborn needs
Cracked porcelain exuding dewy contemplation
Pink fruit oozing bitter circumspection
Yellow-stained skin punctured with faded and plump dates
Lemon extracts crated in crusty and raw mates
With stout burnt-out grass the avid air reeks
Charged with sparks of flashing grins and peeks
Heavy indolent vapors of well abused breath
Fits and starts set all ablaze and tender
Before the pungent winds change to a searing bath
Swollen fare to dwell the fleshy inside
Willing and wet eye does raptly abide
Words reborn and exultant string along their own
To find themselves and in fullness render
The whole and parts surrender to be fully shown
Quiet unrehearsed whimpers end the play times
Sever the merry insouciance of chimes
And bring the moral wings of elevated gloom
To flap with noxious regularity
Which only evens the brackish airs all too soon
Aged softness, timeless dawn of theory
A shroud pinned by dull morning memory
Which trembling by dint of retaining the bare glow
Can not last but loses its charity
Leaving behind nothing but stranded words for show
Collapsed opposites suckling dry life
Immaculate murk of seductive strife
Tangle of empty wisps full of shrill whirling worlds
Distant remains of the stunned nearness
Of abysmally shrunk indifferent cosmic swirls
Filled with hunger the emptiness of more
Which must bring about its own thirsty lore
In an orderly mess of well conceived largess
Besotted calm but for a quaking sore
And yet we are everything, still, without a core
Sad whooping crane! Downed and exhausted bird!
Still dancing to cadences to be heard?
Circle round with round bulbous eyes fixed by the sight
Of the fray -- piled spoils on a silver tray
Warm, still, the bare leftovers of the famished night.