blue cheese, old pickles
golden girls fickle
like falling nickles
drop, spin, switching sides
heads and tails collide
craving connections
tangy affections
gourmet selections
these eyes fixed you right
put you in starlight
adjusting my sight
altering flavors
new bees to savor
selfishness favors
blue cheeses denied
cornbread and grits, Hi!
I shudder while peering at sepia photographs,
showing visits to my maiden Aunt Hilda’s house.
Even though I was very young
it was clear she didn’t tolerate children.
I was to be ‘Seen and not heard.’
Pa said I wasn’t to utter a word.
I loathed being pushed and forced to kiss her.
Aunt's wrinkled leathery skin looked like
she’d been pickled in vinegar.
As she waddled around with a damp duster,
wiping at my finger marks that only she could see,
the wooden floorboards creaked like old bones
for she was grossly overweight.
Her buxom breasts smelled awful
and emitted a musty, moldy, cheesy smell.
Stretchy tan tights were never able to camouflage
the vivid blue bulging varicose veins
which snaked from her calves to her fat ankles.
The old sour puss passed away when I was six
Now, as I reminisce, I will no longer remain silent!
time doesn't wait for our pleasure,
nor the patience of neglect to
~ endure forever...
because it knows and feels,
none of this, nor
how regret births tomorrow's measure!
forgotten fruits fall and wither and
know nothing of those who may have
celebrated their perfection
~ they simply live and die,
never to have wondered why?
Yet, is it our curse to do so,
to eat that fetid fruit that yesterday
would have nourished tomorrow,
left alone in wasted sorrow?
or...will the seeds stuck between
our teeth and toes still grow?
~ who knows?...
i opened the door to my stale heart
and much to my dismay
found there was much
room for improvement
AP: 1st place 2025, 2nd place 2025, Front Page Pick 2025
I do love blue cheese,
It's tasty and delicious,
but don't take at ease.
Really I'm health conscious.
But off and on I relish.
I'm fond of pickles
but as I am health conscious,
I won't take old ones.
I cannot take any risk,
surely decide to avoid.
Have you heard the story,
in all of it's fun and glory.
It is about a young girl named Lori,
she went with a boy named John Dory.
She went running to the lavatory,
was this going to become inflammatory?
Eating blue cheese and old pickles each day,
sitting by the bay.
Her boyfriend John Dory just wanted to play,
she kept saying no way.
Now on her birthday,
she is getting a baby not a blue jay.
Something old, something blue,
Aged not old, a odd pairing,
which unfits the mold.
Taste acquiring,
pungent smell,
putrid looks,
uninspiring.
It is the dare that begs one to love it.
One good sense of five ain't too bad,
When you hold your nose,
close your eyes
and taste it,
breathlessly,
senselessly,
there's the rub.
BLUE CHEESE AND OLD PICKLES
Looking back at the decades gone by
Over the wall at hammers and sickles
Berlin with a certain oldworld appeal
Just the setting for spy novels, I feel
For me, blue cheese and old pickles
A ‘60s memory that’s now gone dry
Blue cheese veins, a suggestion of age
Old pickles in vinegar make me wince
Some say they all were different times
With the red versus blue secret crimes
But has remained unsettled, ever since
If reading history, seeing the next page
As the bear wakes, an eagle flies again
But glancing over a different shoulder
Only across oceans and never a bridge
Is it now time to clear out that fridge
Threats of war both hotter and colder
Yet nervous tension will always remain
Cheese may leave a tang in the throat
Especially if they’re considered as blue
Pickles are always sharp on the tongue
But was that a dirge that I heard sung
Perhaps it is time to know what’s true
And ignore what all the papers wrote
~Quince shaped houses landscape Julienned Street
where citric groans once molded a blue cheese night ~
In one home lives reclusive Graham and his wife, Coco,
two dilled, old pickles nervously living on the lamb.
Busted selling urine for addiction pee tests,
they agreed to flee from a legal barbeque.
Combining their bran, they landed on Julienned.
They peppered with fright when a repair man
fell down, done, dead and fried on their hall floor.
Even freaked, they managed to fully bake a plan.
They dragged his body with mixed moans and groans
to the cellar, filleted him and then designated
him the residents permanent cellar staple.
I fought the good fight, yet still I lost
and you stood in brackish silence
with bitter reward in briny eyes
proffering spiny frowns
shoulders crumbled with aging ache
and brow dimpled with sour failure
I staggered dragging the last crumbs
through the madness of a blue funk
Blue cheese and old pickles -
yukkety yuk.
Take them away from my face.
Blue cheese is so stinky.
Also its taste
even with wine I can’t chase.
If the pickles are dill,
I do not care
if they are new ones or old.
I take pickles sweet or
not one at all.
Dill is no better than mold!
Don’t ask me again how long.
A good joint could last awhile.
That blue cheese smell gave gags,
the price for sky-high smiles.
Don’t ask me again how many.
Really, who remembers them all?
Some were fun and young,
others old and small.
We all had a shelf life.
No more swinging from the tree.
A grocery bag of memories
of that wilder side of me.
The white almond blooms once again
Who hasn’t wanted to sing the praises of the complete
Trigger the sense of smell with this special odor
Green pickles used to be so eager, now hears my groan
I hate thinking of the blue moldy, the debility of aging
With a wrench I closed the lid of all pleasure
In the treetops the crows roared with laughter
- that it is terribly rude to laugh
If laughter was their only joy, frailty showed
A fire burned in me, the soul tormented
I can’t bear to eat my food with a toothpick
after becoming slow and contemplative
Blue Cheese and Old Pickles – 3-14-25 Dedicated to my Grandmother Pickel and her famous pickles.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blue Cheese and Old Pickles
Forgotten in a tapestry of shadows
Woven in long twilights and long rows
Of blue cheeses, tomatoes, daisies and flying salmon
Shelves, birthing dust bunnies,
Give up the last jar of her pickles
Sealed in clear mason glass
Still smelling of dill and garlic and her hands.
Her handiwork still looks
As fresh as crisp cucumbers
Gathered in fields wearing sunflower bonnets
And the scent of new earth readied
To grow round again
With new seeds
Not to forget the children she gave into angel’s hands.
Brought into the light, her love shimmers
Through the artistry of her hands
A rhapsody, sealed and sung across decades,
Plays as I ladle jam and new pickles into her jars,
Savoring my harvest with gorgonzola on toast
And raspberry sherbet on a waffle cone.
Tasteless, puckered galoot,
suited to the cold, he has gout.
Shriveled up, with deep veins,
covering up his shameful ways.
She wears umbrella suits.
He wears rubber boots.
Puddles, of mold, paint the walls;
they stare at the ink blots.
A condominium-plot, paid for,
after they bought lashes, teeth,
and progeny - false. Their money
in the grave, would elude
the kittens. Big galoot
and umbrella suit wish they could
watch their kin crumble,
turn blue
and sour too…
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