Fruit-- good for your health?

Theres something about wealth that
Is not to sweet for your health
You stealth with a lot of wealth
Eating oranges, grapes, bananas
Any time of the year
Feeling no cold weather sneer
As you imbibe juice without jeer
The sweet taste, we appreciate? How near—
Are we to the rind as we are to the

pricked-scarred hands, Thank you
bent-ached backs, Thank you
sweat-wiped brows, Thank you
Thank you


And, too, for rain,
rain fall rain
For trees, roots sinking soil anchors and
Worm logs
And-- for cotton ball clouds caesuras
Split by holy might of a forever sun
Keeping us warm and from ravelling undone


For the sweet taste that is anything
But lethal-if-ingested oil, black murky mystery
Writing a bloody history in the
Truth tomes of time
The drip drip out the tail pipe slime
Oil, oil fall oil
Falls into barrels and soars into the chorus of chaos carolers

All we did was eat a pomegranate, a peach, a pear,
A pair of oranges, bananas, apples
We like to eat, eat, eat any day any way
Sliced, diced, chomped, peeled, unpeeled, seeds, hands, forks, with friends, on a bench, at a kitchen tile counter, while wakling, talking, knife cut up

And, was that same knife used to cut the pie of fair-share wages to profits to oil owner to oil user and
Mercy on the sky!
Mercy on the worker!
Mercy on the fruit!

We smog, we ache, we bruise easily

Being able to pick grapes of a stem gets harder
Biting into an apple’s done slower

When known is the relationship of worker-grower
When known is oil spike heeded for the fruit to come over

And a tree is just a tree, or is it not a commoditree
Commodity, excuse me, what about that fruit
In your ring fingered hand stands a quandary I
Ululate to understand

Is the fruit fair
Is the trusting truth there
Is the worker wobbly from wear
Is the Chavez1 care appare-
apparent and in the supply-demand sentiment

That’s peeled dry of emotion and squirted is the
profit potion to keep the mundo2 in motion
mass transit, interconnection, injustice infection
blood and oil and fruit and farmers

these big picture, macro-multi-complex matters
examined, seem a ship splattered at sea
sinking humanity on the t.v.

Mercy on humanity!
Mercy on money!
Mercy on trade!

What is fair? What is fresh? What is fruit?
What is in your hand

Ah, always more, to
(cut up, chew, choke, swallow, purge, digest, absorb, release) to…
understand


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1 Cesar Chavez led United Farmer Workers to improve rights for produce laborers 1960s-1970s
2 mundo (el mundo—the world, in Spanish)