Photos in cook books taste differently if you’ve tasted the fare.
The map reads differently once you’ve been there.
India is just a yellow looking arrowhead
till you have set foot on her brown earth
and all its life love and monkey headed gods
worship through you
and
hope and despair read as opposite truths
till you have been there
and hope is despair
in the middle of that air of ocean
alone
on a lifeboat
floating on water you cannot drink
life thirsting for death on the brink
till mind cracked, lips cracked, the madman cracks the lip of the ocean with his hands
trying to imbibe the salty blood of the sea
too far from shore to see the heart of the worldly man is like the worm
on a dung hill, never wanting to be moved
cupping handful after handful of salt water into his mouth
so mad he thinks he’s slaking his thirst
when really he is faking his thirst
feeding his thirst
salt.
cottonbombs 
Peter, you have been baking too many Christmas goodies! You have been tasting from too many mixing bowls. So NOW you admit you were faking your chocolate craving! Seriously, I am still swirling around off shore in a riptide with a REAL thirst fed by all the salt from re-re-reading this poem.
Somehow, this poem reminds me of the time my grandmother came to spend a weekend in our home when my parents both had mumps (they had grown up BEFORE the MMR vaccine) as late 30s adults–very serious, very high fevers. My grandmother was a terriffic cook, but she misplaced her reading glasses when cooking up a week’s worth of food for myself and my younger brother. She therefore mistook the salt cellar for the sugar bowl. You can imagine the brine level of our breakfast oatmeal, our yeast rolls, our pies, our cakes, our cookies, our vegetable casseroles, our gravies and sauces–you name it! We were NOT faking thirst. Hey, now I am beginning to see a glimmer of this “faking thirst” business as only YOU can produce. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many tasting chores, eh? Does fakery EVER work?
what a superb bowie hunter’s knife this poem is…
cutting right through a brochure’s unfilfilled promise.
it feels like courage wrote this.
cottonbombs, this is definitely inspiring!
i felt myself being lowered deeper and deeper
to the “crux of the biscuit”
Thank very much! I am flattered I can inspire you in any way. I always enjoy seeing what you come up with on your end, so I’ll be happily looking for any allusions to salt or the sea in a baseball kind of way. Seattle Mariners thirsting for their first championship. The poem writes itself.
Rose! Wow. No body leaves comments like you. Wonderful. Your words taste a hell of a lot better than your grandma’s cooking after misplacing her glasses. I am reminded of how my Mom tried to get my sister and me to eat liver by putting it in hamburgers. Nice try, Mom, but, just because it doesn’t look like liver, it still smells like liver. No, fakery only gets you so far, like one bite before knowing liver before you spit it back out.
Excellent poem once again – I love this one!!
Dear Peter,
I admitted your love. It is difficult for me to write comment for your poems. It gave me so many feelings and to explain in English those feelings is difficult. If I make mistake please forgive me. There is a man who called Mevlana, he lived in 13 century. He was sufii, he fell in love with Sems. I think the love was spiritually but after Sems death he created many spiritual poems. Mevlana gave enlightenment about life and love to Anatolian people like Jesus. Are you looking for the love that is reflection of the god love? I hope you will find it physically in your life time.
Elif Şafak who is writer wrote the book called Love. I’m looking for this book to give you. I know there is an English version for this book. You are a good writer. Your poems affected me.
Daisy! Thank you for stopping by and giving such a response. I am interested in finding beauty in every cloud or ashtray it may hide. I am also interested in this writer you mentioned here. I know so little about Turkey and the Middle East that all I know is I am ignorant to all the lovely poetry waiting to be discovered on that side of the world. Thank you for pointing me in that direction.