Peanut butter crackers
Simplicity made edible
Clarity digestible
Sweet, savory, salty
Incredible
A child tries to eat them 3 ways
You munch it whole, grinning
Pull it apart and in pieces, loving
Or not at all
A hot new album
comes down the gullet
of the American consciousness
Heartbeat made audible
Struggle laudable
Pain protracted, amplified, and interactive
Applaudable
A child tries to hear it 3 ways
You consume it whole, dancing
You pull it apart and in pieces, loving
Or not at all
A person enters the room
Complexity made sentient
Identically different
Misunderstood, consumed either as art or as food
Eccentric
A child tries to see them 3 ways
You exhume them whole, judging
You pull them apart and in pieces, loving
Or not at all
A person enters the room
How we consume art or crackers well that's how we consume
Casting judgement?
Might as well cast the dice, roll the bones, and hop on your broom
You don't know what's inside the peanut butter
You don't know how the album was made
You know that you like it
You might know why
Or you abstained
Disengaged or played too rough
Missed half the crumbs
Only heard the hits
You dribbled and then forgot to shoot
Or forgot to dribble, shot, and missed
Children are impartial judges of partial things
We can trust them to be honest but not always to think
Yet at least as they pick apart the crackers they sing
We mutter curses as we forget to lick our fingers clean
If only you could consume another human
with the same care and intent as a child eating peanut butter crackers
Watching cartoons in the afternoon but
You won't
Because to a child they are novelty
They are new and delicious
When they break something apart in their exploration
They are mildly disappointed and they make wishes
When we break something we are vicious
We blame the flimsy cracker
Rail against the artist
In our failure to enjoy we never pardon
Couldn't be that your feet are just not fast enough to dance
Couldn't be that maybe the pieces taste better in someone else's
Than your hands
Couldn't be that maybe you're the stranger in the room
Couldn't be that maybe you grew up to soon
Now we detest the unfamiliar
The immediately unrecognizable
We eat the cracker whole
and haven't stopped shuffling our "liked songs"
In a long while
Keep it moving on bad faith
Expectations and assumptions well laid
No desire to share joy only to get paid
Where is your creative spirit in the analysis of the babe
Did you forget to take it apart?
To appreciate the notes, the clothes, the filling, and the heart
Did you even try cracker cracker peanut butter?
Or double peanut butter?
Or just peanut butter?
Did you even consider it with your headphones on?
Or rolling the windows down and cranked up out loud?
Or while enjoying a drink on the back porch or front lawn?
Did you even stop to wonder how...
How is the cracker made?
How did the album come about
How does the way that I consume it change the taste as it goes down
Well if you've been so careless with these things
I assure you the depths of the soul are far beyond your
Dirty, unappreciative, greedy, gulp-it-down-whole, tasteless, thoughtless, far-too-grown-up mouth