A Bottle Of Mustard

 

A Bottle Of Mustard

 

It sounds weird doesn’t it?

We both agreed

It sounds weird

 

Like a trombone of toothpaste

Or a birdhouse of gin

 

People don’t say it that way

Despite the fact that mustard packers

Have been packing mustard in bottles

For a (completely made up number) of years

 

So many years that it makes time

Look like a vibrator murdered in frosting……..

 

A battalion of soy sauce

A suitcase of mayonnaise

A quiet syringe of pumpkins

 

You don’t really hear people

Refer to mustard that way

We both agreed on this

We’d never heard anybody say something like:

 

Please pass the bottle of mustard, Angelita? or

Brad, did you remember to pick up

That bottle of mustard you said you’d pick up

At the Assorted Condiments store?

 

[Historical note: the answer to one of these things

Was ‘no’, hence their sequel quickly re-titled:

Mr. and Mrs. Divorce]

 

(I can’t believe you forgot the goddamn bottle of mustard

Again, goddamn it! What am I supposed to feed the kids!?

You dick!

 

Some of us have a hard time letting things go)

 

A guillotine of salami

A tube of your beauty

A filing cabinet of laughter alphabetized by fun

 

“I can’t believe you ate an entire bottle of mustard, Brad?”

Ha!

People don’t talk that way, do they?

We didn’t think they did

(Where’d our parking lot go?)

We were almost sure of it

 

A hash pipe of pasticcios

(Is that really how you’re supposed to spell ‘pasticcios’?)

A Sheryl Crow of toilet paper

A full moon of Emily Blunt

 

A packet of mustard? That made sense to us

A jar of mustard sounding like plane ol’ common sense

But a bottle of mustard, nope

 

That just sounded wrong to us

Like a cornucopia of relish

Or President Trump

 

Cersei/ergo:

 

These are some of the many things we talked about

Before looking for our parking lot after

The Rob Thomas/Counting Crows Red Rocks show

 

[Historical note: Turns out the reason it took us

A couple of hours to get in the car was because

Our parking lot had slipped off on the tour bus

With the bass player from one of the bands,

Returning somewhat eventually with a 2016

Tour t-shirt and a bruised clit)

 

Postscript:

 

No raincoats were harmed in the writing of this poem

 

(A candelabra of potato salad

A nalgene of celery

A salt water aquarium of love)