Day: March 29, 2019

(March 28, 2019)

epazote* stalks

ready-to-bloom reminds me

must make chili soon

*(Epazote, like most if not all our food plants or herbs is a weed. It grows in spoil-lands wherever its fluttery streamer seeds take early Spring wind. It is natal from Panama to New York City’s Central Park, though in most polite – and sadly untutored sites – it is pulled as the weed it is and left to rot. Better to cut off the seed head (pre-deadheading I shall declaim you, since you want not to draw all the plant’s power to reproduction and keep it in the stem) and plop chunks into simmering bean dishes of which chili is a mainstay. Takes away athleticism anally if you get my drift. Eat legumes remain unmusical, so say its aficionados and Central American and Southern cooks from Texas to The Carolinas. Dry the parts you put not into your beanpots. The seeds, like those from other flowering weeds will float everywhere. Although some say it’s “an acquired taste” and claim Epazote is an analog of turpentine – which is a canard true and flightless – it is full of ascorbic acid…which will not get your high but chase off any attempts at scurvy…it’s chock-full of Vitamin C, in longer words. And it tastes just fine on its own. So, there!)

“March 28, 2019)

call it book racin’*

fall in and throw a word-wake

world no longer is

*(When I found out the junior high school at which I was sentenced early in the century’s sixth decade I escaped music class by claiming I needed help reading. I got help. Instead of a mere 250 words-per-minute with a miserly 75-percent retention rate I left eighth grade puttering along near 600 wpm with a retention rate broaching 90th percentile’s rare waters. Then I found a speed reading paperback in Mister Fannin’s classrom bookshelf and asked if I could take it home…”that’s what they’re there for, J,” the kindly teacher who saw through my sham at first glance when I took the introductory test. I later found a tattered used copy of the same book – and when I go ‘brary-diving later this year mayhap I will find it again amidst the several thousand friends boxed or shelved in a way-out-back storage room. Then I gladly will share the title for any other young lad or lass who needs to escape a scrape with music…so much like math. I confess right here and now I am so much better at after-math!)