I will always remember the day I first
tasted a borojo in a Costa Rican orchard
near the Panama border. The borojo
tasted like mulled wine and looked like
a baseball that someone had buried underground
for two hundred years; its texture
I can only compare to triple-crème Brie.

I dream of monstera deliciosa:
the fruit that looks like an ogre’s bunion
and smells like strawberry-guava pudding.
Or diospyros nigra, the black sapote,
which tastes like licking date paste off a stone.

This is not a bubblegum pink
nor is it a sultry magenta
or a coy blush. The exact hue
of Del Monte’s pineapple is more
of a peony-cantaloupe blend —
a color I’ve seen on polo shirts
in Cape Cod and on the lips of actresses
in midcentury Douglas Sirk films.
I’d call it Teenage Shrimp.

Each pineapple arrives with a gold-sealed
certificate of authenticity
congratulating the recipient
on obtaining this royal delicacy
and a helpful reminder
to tag #PinkGlowPineapple
and watch the likes pour in.

(From Instagram Fruit)

It could be for Diabetes awareness month
maybe brain tumours.
Perhaps the wearer is supporting
increased awareness for borderline personality disorder.
But, most likely nowadays
they’re raising Zombie Awareness

(check for neck beard and/or barbed wire
wrapped baseball bat in their hand).

Confused? Let’s look at November.
Movember, right? Prostate Cancer
and Men’s Health awareness, no?
It’s also Alzheimer’s Awareness month
and No Nut November
promoting abstinence
and COPD Awareness
and National Novel Writing Month.
So plenty to do, along with early
Christmas shopping, Guy Fawkes Night
and your job and family duties.

Just make sure you don a gray ribbon
so that people know you also care
about the inevitable zombie apocalypse
even though that should be done in May.

(From Top 10 awareness campaigns that didn’t work out too well)

There’s a burnt body in front of my office.
Then I’m playing Scrabble with friends.
There’s bomb smoke rising in front of the mall.
Then I’m at a concert. There’s a long line
for gas. Then I’m at a nightclub.

This is how it happens. Precisely
what you’re feeling now.
The numbing litany of bad news.
The ever rising outrages.
People suffering, dying,
and protesting all around you,
while you think about dinner.

I used to judge those herds of gazelle
when the lion eats one of them alive
and everyone keeps going.

I went to work, I went out, I dated.

We’d pop the trunk for a bomb check.
Turn off our lights for the air raids.
I know people who were beaten, arrested,
and went into exile. But that’s not
what my photostream looks like.

The pain doesn’t go away, it just becomes
a furniture of bones, in a thousand homes.
There’s no launch party for decay.

(From I lived through collapse. America is already there)