When a man loves a woman,
he is asked: Soup or salad?
And though he has trained
his whole life for this,
the man will inquire
about the soup of the day
like the black angel of dichotomies.
Days can’t survive here,
the waiter replies.
We’re slumming it around the rough
and tumble hood of a black hole.
Or more precisely, adds another waiter
polishing some silver,
we’re trapped inside
an artist’s rendition of a black hole.
Thus the stilted elephants
crushing bystanders.
Thus the dada hitching posts protruding
from your rapidly expanding wings.
And by this point,
the soup is cold
and sliding toward the void.
Massive abysses coalesce above the fans
absorbing bouquets of hyacinths.
Maybe, suggests the artist,
who up to this point
has remained silent,
the soup nebula
is colliding with the salad belt
bounding its brothy ellipses.
This collision is forming varied
whole-wheat and kale anomalies.
Maybe, suggests the man,
we are all just victims of one another
in one fashion or another.
Then the cops bust in
and begin blackjacking everyone.
Shattered plates litter the floor.
How hard it has been
to love like this.