Weeds

December rains iguanas from the trees
a rough thermometer to mark the drop
when Winter brings Dade county to its knees,
lean protein's free in this exotic crop.
Like lionfish, invasives can be sweet
('though Asian carp remain an uphill sell).
Reptilian tacos could be tourists' treat,
if marketers stepped up, and did it well.
A species like our own, when out of place,
wrecks havoc in a garden, or at large.
Few have the spine to tell us to our face
We're pathogens, deluded we're in charge.
Eventually, Earth will be OK
and sooner, if we'd merely go away.

hands down

When cuttlefish can out-perform your pet
in problem-solving, and in self-control
Some want to question which of them gets et
and which enjoys the snug domestic role.
Domestication only fits the few
who understand a social hierarchy
The rest, we're prone to stir fry, bake, or stew;
We're picky in our hospitality.
This season, chordates seem to dominate
'though dinosaurs succumbed, we muddled on
But roll those dice again, a different fate
This time, a mollusc entry might have won.
Contingent evolution favored spines
but something else will rule, another time.

antiscorbutic

In riotous profusion by the trail,
their weight bears skinny branches down to earth.
In Huckleberry season, bring a pail!
Those jams are worth your life in months of dearth.
Diseases that bedeviled us through time,
attributed to deities enraged,
until the Royal Navy found the lime,
few sailors lived  to reach robust old age.
Exacerbating all, they kept pet cats
to guard their precious biscuits while at sea.
In ignorance that--unlike Man--those rats
can synthesize their own vitamin 'C'.
The summer hillside flush with fleeting wealth
Can cannily be canned for lasting health.

...and there was famine in the Land...

Across America, we feel the dearth
bread-flour's gone and yeast is hard to buy.
A lover who can bake's of sterling worth!
And even those who can't, feel moved to try.
The staff of life our fathers' fathers ate
seems suddenly uncertain here and now
the gliaden I've trained to aggregate
has no good substitute, preparing chow.
But still, the farmers sow, and reapers reap
and grain that's once been ground's on hand somewhere
especially the white stuff's meant to keep
it's only oils that spoil exposed to air.
Accustomed to force-feeding like we're geese.
Strange famine, in the Land of the Obese.

unbalanced

clear-cutting old-growth forests of brown kelp
sea urchins mow whole eco-systems down.
I'll eat more uni ('cause I want to help)
Until sea otter numbers can rebound.
At equilibrium, there's food for all!
echinoderms proliferate quite well.
Such delicacies barely even crawl
a billion years, they've trusted spine and shell.
Tool users serve their gonads up on rice
as briny sushi with that unctuous glow
the simplest presentation, shorn of spice
sophisticated diners love their roe.
We chordates have no future on this Earth
if we won't grant these algae their due worth.

fifteen minutes of fame

One hangry vegan, strapped for revenue
confirmed what we'd concluded long before.
To gun down engineer-staff at YouTube
neurotic dame forgot we're not at war.
The videos she thought would change the world
were algorithmicly deemed indiscreet
by filters set to guard our boys, and girls,
who don't need abs of steel, but thrive on meat.
The right to bear a musket, sword, or knife
should not apply where moral growth's gone bad.
There's more than protein missing from her life;
it shouldn't take a court to judge she's mad.
Adults don't bring small arms to business fights
nor murder humans over livestock's rights.

treyf

Isaiah knew Rubashkin to a tee,
contemptuous of workers in his pay,
a Bronze-Age specimen of prophecy
as apt as ever, to this present day.
When Mammon's dearer than his fellow man,
the stranger, and the orphan in the street
are tools that he'll abuse, because he can
to sell what he purports is kosher meat.
His acts betray no ethical design;
morality's a word he leaves at shul.
As with his fellow, so with the Divine
too privileged to mind the Golden Rule.
When such a gonif's backed by leading Jews,
eschewing meat's a protest more will choose.

perfect

sous-vide denatures proteins, each in turn
'though it won't sear a surface like hot coal
you're confident your meal will cook, not burn
the water-bath gives anyone control
the hydrophobic sidechains from inside
turned outward, make the proteins aggregate
for lack of chaperones, this colloid's fried
the moisture content's lost as exudate
the lambchops that a beaver couldn't chew
we pray are relegated to the past
they're now a trifle anyone can do
cosmetic grillmarks only added last
the water-oven's more than just a fad
it saves ingredients from going bad

Ichthy!

Had Greenlanders, like normal Norse, caught cod
they'd have occasion to give mighty thanks
to their new Christian Savior and God
for guiding their longships to the GrandBanks
the Portuguese fed Europe on salt fish
but only came ashore to dry their haul
no rival learned where they became so rich
until Columbus showed us where to trawl
Leif Erikson's odd dietary quirk
left North American for French and Brits
phlegmatic colonists, so not berserk
laid low the skaelings with disease and wits
strange petulance, a toddler's attitude
to starve where waters teemed with so much food

lore

the alchemy of hollandaise, or roux
makes colloids comprehensible to some
but for a scientist, like me, or you
that's not the way the explanations run
hypotheses are falsified, or not
that map a pattern to the dataset
explaining why a sauce grows thick, when hot
and why your roast won't brown while it's still wet
to melt a crystal and produce a glass
or use Maillard to brown a joint of meat
manipulating charge, and heat, and mass
a sugar caramelized need not be sweet
the kitchen arts are mostly chemistry
but more books sell when it's "gastronomy"

hot air

Oligosaccharides we can't digest
are clipped to methane by our symbiotes.
Archaea who've long been our GI guests,
have wed their fortunes to our gastric lot.
Electron-transport stalls at Hydrogen
or ethanol, or lactate where air's scant.
but H2's gobbled by methanogens
that tolerate an atmosphere we can't.
It's gluten takes the rap when bellies bloat,
or when a bank of fog swirls in their head.
Now, fussy eaters get a doctor's note;
it's all the rage to swear off eating bread!
The staff of life on which the West still leans
next year, the faddish diet foreswears...beans?

Sleeper

"all natural!" the strychnine package read
"low sodium!" "sincerely gluten-free!"
it's not our fault if users end up dead
this stuff's organic! from an unpruned tree!
a generation self-righteous and sure
mistrusts ingredients in six-point type
embracing what's left unrefined as "pure"
convinced that what's so groovy can't be hype
organic every day they had on Earth
four thousand generations just got by
whatever got them through our times of dearth
and all the better if fat-content's high
the true believers try to live on kale
with supplements refined from brewer's yeast
but I'll take a steak (rare) washed down with ale
and leave the greens to garnish the roast beast
food fashions are endorsed with foolish zeal
then damned another time around Time's wheel

oily logic

the benefits of skim-milk are obscure
unseen in epidemiology
but those who like to take their snake-oil pure
insist their dairy products be fat-free
inflammatory lipids are the fad
that set our leukocytes on the wrong tracks
so eating herring's good, but beef is bad
and some go vegan, shunning flesh for flax
instead, they load their diets up with soy
and look for miracles in mounds of kale
and shun a nutrient that might give joy
and swig fermented tea instead of ale
but salad's not the stuff of which we dream
in sleep we fantasize about ice-cream

motivated

Dawn finds us stooped, already on our  quest
with gun and pail and tripod on the sand
when saner folk are still snug in their nest
out foraging to find the horse-neck clam
the bay lies emptied this low tide of June
with cryptic dents and holes at which we stare
obedient to both the sun and moon
the ocean's gathered into heaps elsewhere
what wage could compensate such brutal work
that we perform for sport and don't complain
we thrill at possibilities that lurk
and shrug at those who doubt that we are sane
strange act of faith, to claw through sand and muck
as if we dreamt we'd bag a geoduck

the quest of the unicorn

Elasmotherium haunts Russians' dreams
although we ate the last one long ago
the unicorn those little girls esteem
bore one straight horn (but not a single toe)
still, shamans dance with smilodons at night
long after we have ceased to be their prey
our minds fill in ancestral inner-sight
when we ingest enough MDMA
the mega-fauna of another age
still graven on the pathways where we think
succumbed to our grand-sires' flint-tipped rampage
and now are--overwhelmingly--extinct
we slew them then and lived to rue it now
who knows--some might be tastier than cow

shadow of the man

Bill Clinton foreswore meat and lost some weight
but something more went missing in the deal
although as years roll by he's looking great
his passions gutter out on vegan meals
the slickest politician of his age
whose tool-kit only lacked in self-restraint
diminished now he's turned this newest page
less penitent and more aspiring saint
the mind's still sharp, but voters crave the charm
that resonated with both North and South
seducing both the board-room and the farm
with honeyed tongue in such a gifted mouth
deployed to rout the specter of defeat
in Iowa, that battle's waged on meat

Butz

farm subsidies distort economies
one seeks in vain a rhyme or reason why
incentives don't align with any need
'cause government keeps pumping the supply

Earl Butz was told to bring farm votes in line
as if democracy were on the block
Dick Nixon didn't need a grand design
his  tactics were unprincipled, ad hoc

now corporations grow fat on the dole
as fam'ly farmers sell out in distress
each harvest finds them further in the hole
as more and more produce produces less

mechanization changed the face of wealth
and undercut democracy's core health