I’m reading from the menu in this life’s quaint cafe <br />and see that all the specials here were served up yesterday <br />and you, my waitress, bring a menu, and toss it in my lap <br />as I avert my swollen eyes, refusing to look back <br />You rattle off my choices, with such practiced ease <br />to my chagrin you didn’t offer a thing I’d care to eat <br />I asked you what the hell you meant as you filled my ears with hate <br />and what were your intentions as you heaped more on my plate <br />and dumped out your emotions, and pushed them toward me too <br />and got more angry when I said there’s nothing I could do <br />then filled a glass with swollen tears, much to my alarm <br />set that down, and glared at me and folded angry arms <br />but drink that down, you told me then, and to my disbelief <br />you smiled at me, but then you said, the refills are on me <br />the second course, to my surprise, was memories decayed <br />with sides of pain and discontent, with a hollandaise <br />I asked if I could skip the courses - three and four and five <br />but on they came, and next you brought transgressions, lightly fried <br />then came fear, and loathing too, followed by my pride <br />then the main course, deceit with lies, and denial on the side <br />I knew that I had had my fill, I couldn’t down much more <br />but then there came, my just desserts, that confectionary tour <br />sponge cake from my troubled mind, with sorbet from my heart <br />black forest cake from in my soul, and friendship offered tarts <br />you sliced each dish with malcontent, with daggers from your eyes <br />and served each plate with bad intent, and disaffected sighs <br />then came my tab, to my surprise, there was nothing left to pay <br />you gently set in at my sleeve, and turned and walked away<br /><br />John J. Senchak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/manipulation-the-life-cafe/
