Lunch and Soot and Sail

1.
Lunch and Soot
were my friends
before I learned to use semicolons
before pretension set in
like pneumonia
from exposure
to

all this, I guess

I liked the rattle of school, the
sound of the wheels on the gravel
when it grew intolerably hot
all of your weekends would roll out before you
unfurl like a sail, and we would mark our charts with schemes
ideas about time and ambition, before
the sailcloth would flump to the grass, and we remembered
that we owned no rigging

2.
When I eat macaroni and cheese, I prefer to use a spoon (because
I am a graceless slavering thing, who is primarily concerned
with the transfer of twists from bowl to maw);
I get fuller bites and besides
what did you mean to accomplish
with both a large bowl of macaroni and cheese,
unaccompanied,
and dignity?
I just prefer spoons.

When Soot learned dirty words, he used them like spoons,
on anything they could even conceivably hold.
He would have used two spoons to eat sushi, if he
had been aware of this analogy then,
or of sushi.

he swore with diabolic innocence
a little dictator
a prepubescent nuclear option
and a firm belief in Valhalla

the words themselves could frighten us, could fill us
with dread and life

 3.
You still like toys
and I still like that
but you really ought to remember a simple dentist appointment.