Intention: Sweets and Candies of the Mind (This is not a poem)

 I wait at the oven 

for a delicacy that I have been 

baking for many years 

little Roald Dahl pastry puffs

little Sedaris Snacks 

Empty carbs and sugar and fat

of language 

the flavor of rain 

as a child when 

you must sing to 

open your mouth to the sky 

ahhhhhh she says to try 

to catch the drops 

unworried about the 

flavor or the purity 

just you, as a child, 

with your arms out 

waiting to be quenched 

by the sky 

a dance and a tap of the feet

a little jig of joy 

nothing better than your body 

responding to the cup of your heart 

as it's filled with rain. 

a Plastic Pudding Cup with An Aluminum Lid that You'd Lick

 What a heavy load these 

fifteen years have brought on 

my creased spine 

each year, the children 

look younger and younger

always about to become

always cloying at 

some unseen version

of themselves 

a full-fat vanilla pudding 

cup left half-eaten in

the dumpster behind 

the Hawaiian-themed 

apartment complex

with the unlit alley 

They'll become some 

thrown away, cast off 

disposable plastic 

and the only cruealty 

that we have given them 

is the hope that they are 

anything else.