Person is Not a Rude Word

1.  Continuing an edibles theme this week and entering a contentious arena:

to SPAM or not to SPAM?

2.  That Hormel tinned treat – gourmet delicacy-4-some – became septegenarian last decade & is enjoying a come-back in these austerity times.  Get ALL the facts from Wiki…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)

3. SPAM does sometimes wend its meaty way into my recycled-black-plasti-crate ‘larder’ when it’s ‘on’ BOGOF special at my local supermarket…

(for the non-shopaholically-inclined, see Glossary Category Part 2 re ‘bogof’)

4.  I recently encountered someone using Marmite (the veggie-if-not-vegan savoury sandwich filler and toast topper) as a verb, as in you either marmite something or you don’t. So it is too with SPiced hAM: supposedly love it or loathe it…

Spam Poem, July 99

5. Not-quite-dissed (but bombed) during the Poetry Slam performance at Ways With Words literary festival of 1999, in Dartington’s Great Hall, my rendition of the mid-Nineties-composed ‘Sickening for SPAM’ was, ironically, immortalised by festival artist, Sue Kendall…

http://www.wayswithwords.co.uk/

Hopefully the proem will express the mélange of my emotions on this aforementioned contentious & meaty issue…

Sickening for SPAM

My dad was in advertising
when he went to work on an egg.
To beat the foetal nausea
my mum guzzled SPAM.
(Sperm’n’eggs coalesce.
Ergo SPAM’n’coal cravings.)
Thus was “healthy appetite”
graffiti’d on my genes.

As a special Sixties treat
Sunday’s roast was the
clove-studded tin-shaped
gammon-substitute.
Yummers! they said, swooning
over the dinky winding key
that unlocked all that
succulent SPAM goodness.

Going on Cornish holidays:
cornflakes at 6 am, then
on-the-road in-a-layby
9 o’clock SPAMwiches
(white sliced with crusts on)
and Camp coffee in a Thermos.
If you’re going to be carsick
have your bathing cap
at the ready.

By the time Monty Python
had gone “Spam’n’eggs,
Spam’n’chips, Spam’n’Spam”,
we’d gone upmarket
caravanning in France.
But first, our mum went
down market, bottom-ranking
SPAM-substitute “Mozart”
in her bag-on-wheels.
Oh! Je vais vomir
with pommes de frites…

Living près de l’English Riviera
The S.A.D. – and sometimes
nauseating – grockels now
come to us, craving sun.
On May Day they’ve thrown up
all caution to the deceptive wind
and turned Spam-flesh-pink with
white halter’n’straps striping.

Retaining my tofu-pallid
complexion, I day-trip into
no-man’s-land: surfing
the world-wide-web for
haikus on SPAM.
Cybernetic reams of
puke-up-pink and
gag-along-greasy
seventeen syllable offerings.

Today, we take these
vacant vacations,
sitting right-at-home
with the gnawing fear
of being ‘spammed’:
for virus-spawning
advertising to spew
all over our microchips…
Quel horreur!
“error…error…error…”
grafitti’d on our screens.

©  Luc(e) Raesmith

And for those who dare…

http://web.mit.edu/jync/www/spam/