The theme for SPEAK tonight is “steam.” I’ve been trying to come up with something, to no avail.

Then, I was dozing off and this came to me. Promise — I’m going to sleep immediately after I get it down. 😉

Come On In My Kitchen

There’s nothing in the pantry.

It’s too late to go out
to the store,
and the teakettle
is almost boiled out,
the whistle just
starting to sputter,
it’s fogging up
the windows
so no one can see in
for the steam.

I’m sitting
in the middle of the kitchen
with the blues on the radio
and I’m hungry enough
to eat someone.

Outside, it’s one of them hot damn nights
when everyone says it’s too hot to cook
and ice tea is the only thing
keeping them from tearing their clothes off.
They talk like they know something about the heat,
but it’s all just talk.

In here, it’s hot.
It’s summer in here,
summer enough to cloud your sight. No faking it,
no airconditioning, no fans to make you think
of spring; it’s just — hot.

If I was in the Mississippi Delta
it’d be a long red night
with the thunderstorms reeling toward us
west to east. I might go outside then
and watch them come in,
run a little steel upside the strings
of a Sears and Sawbuck guitar.

But up here in Massachusetts
we only think we know what summer is.
We only think we know what hunger is,
and we don’t know half of anything
about what the blues are.

I think I’ve got a clue or two tonight.
I can hear something rumbling in the far clouds.

You come up to the back door and ask how I am.

I tell you, there’s nothing in the pantry
and I am just about hungry enough
to eat someone.

You push the door open. You take
the teakettle off the burner.
You set a place at the table,

but
you let them foggy windows be.