knife in hand, new orleans
is an ardent oyster shucker
seeking not pearls but rather
the eager consumption of
tart juice & slippery succulence
if your psyche is tight
big easy will pry
you open and suck,
swallow your inhibitions
without chewing
just after slathering
hot sauce on the chilled
goose-pimples
of your disrobed flesh
shivering beneath the artificial cold
of air conditioned discomfort
folk not from here
say we nasty
wrinkle their nostrils
in our presence
but keep coming back
slipping betwixt the warmth
of our nights where brazen shadows
couple and dance with abandon
how can we ignore the specter
of a drunken politician french kissing
an underage paramour or the exorcism
of an unfrocked priest
kneeling in a bathroom stall?
—the answer is simply
to accept the rawness
embedded within each human breast
to unselfconsciously embrace
the amoral appetites
of our predator hearts
as each of us searches
for ways to satisfy urges
civilization may suppress
but which nature will not allow
any of us to fully deny — or,
as one lover
said to another:
bon appetité
—kalamu ya salaam