The neighborhood buffet boasted
fried chicken and biscuits, toasted,
creamy gravy, and smashed taters.
You can serve yourself, no waiters.
Into the long line you will strut
more than ready to fill your glut.
Bypass the green salads and soup;
run quickly, to the fried foods swoop
all you can eat for one price cheap.
Pile your plate high in one big heap.
If one plate full is not enough,
get back in line and your mouth stuff
with fried okra and sweet cornbread,
rice, beans, pasta, and liver spread.
Undo your belt a notch or two
so one more bite you can chew.
Desserts abound, cookies and cakes,
puddings, custards, tarts, and milk shakes.
Round out the meal with soft ice cream.
Maybe two cones won’t burst a seam.
You leave, with a bloated waist thick,
well-sated, and full as a tick.
Oh, was there ever a tale of such woe,
a tale of music, lust, and revelry!
Of Juliet and her mad Romeo
when the reggae drums put a spell on me.
In his yen for Herbs and thirst for the vine
Romeo joined the queue full as a tick –
and drank the poison, the sweet feijoa wine
but it was like a mule with twice the kick.
On the grapes of wrath I was a tragic fool,
and I felt that kick of that angry mule.
All I want when I from
this world am gone
is that men say he died with his boots on.
In the hot sun and spinning clouds above
his heart quickened for her underbreath.
Their destiny a cursed forbidden love
and sweet wine a taste of bitter death.
On leaving he rolled flatlining in a ditch -
“I beg you, leave me here…I wanna die!”.
Later with a skinful too numb to twitch
slumped in a bathtub hungover to dry.
On the grapes of wrath I was a tragic fool,
and I felt that kick of that angry mule.
All I want when I from
this world am gone
is that men say he died with his boots on.
Written: July 2008
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.