We feasted our way into this mess
and by God we’ll feast our way out.
Here — we’ll sit by the fireplace
(all places count as such now)
and slake our smoky throats:
drink deeply the tempests in teapots
lest they thrash lands unprepared, unrepentant.
Saltwater-crusted teeth are a small price
to stay our course — we’re all Atlantis-averse
here, chalice-sippers.
With the right lies we can make darlings of anything
so some of us sacrifice by falling
in love. Nowhere’s safer for butterflies
than the stomach, nowadays, and it mightn’t be so bad —
being a home. We’ll make room for bees as well,
atonement via appetite for collapsing them all. We can’t deny
the thrill of rescuing honey.
Consumption’s what doomed us, yes,
but surely this new insatiability will save the creatures
we’ve deemed deserving. Of course, let’s be practical.
The mouth works in two directions:
we must remember too to sing our children lullabies,
lend them just laws that keep us fed.
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