Comment on this- Free Verse

Ingreedience by Graeme King

Luigi loved to feed upon spaghetti,

and served it at his wedding feast, of course,

insisting it be thrown as though confetti -

his first step on the long road to divorce.



Lu Pang enjoyed the tang of fiery chili,

and crushed it into everything he ate,

but adding it to coffee? That was silly.

No wonder that he died at twenty-eight.



Old Jock abhorred the shocking price of stilton,

they asked too much for such a modest cheese,

he strode into the store without his kilt on,

and showed them all some Highlands expertise.



As Sikhar ate his chicken au Tandoori,

the neighbors all discussed his missing wife,

the recipe could not convince the jury,

so now he's in a Bombay cell for life.



When Dixie mixed elixir out of Pepsi,

she noticed that it caused her throat to melt,

deciding it was simply epilepsy,

she laughed it off and took another belt.



Poor Dougie's spicy nuggets in a bucket

had got him running hard, his throat in flames,

he broke the record: New York to Nantucket,

you'll see him in Beijing's Olympic Games.



Ali prefers his tea brewed in a turban,

he squeezes it till just the leaves remain,

washed down with several shots of Gypsy bourbon,

he says he reads the future in the stain.



Jemima mixed up lime and green banana,

then fed it to her fish, who quickly died,

she smoked a half an ounce of marijuana,

then sat through Finding Nemo till she cried.



A crippled long-haired hippie craved a pigeon,

to put into a pie with fried raccoon,

he looked into the sky and found religion,

he preaches every Saturday, at noon.


This is a free verse poem marked by constant caesura, breaks in thoughts in the poem. The purpose of this is to show the wide variety of ways in which people both interact with and get in trouble as a result of their food. Each stanza is marked by a definite divide in thought process. It seems as though the author was trying to make many points all within the structure of one poem. This style reminds me of reading "Song of Myself in the summer. That was certainly far longer than this but was similar in regards to fitting so many ideas into one poem.