Apples And Oranges

Like baseballs in size and shape.
Pitchers wish their Sunkist sliders
had that pebbled grip with its hundred pocks
or a jug-handle curve dropped
like an apple from the knowledge tree
and died at home plate.

In the Queen's Navy sailors died of scurvy,
citrus-starved. Bless the bloody orange
for its C, and bless bioflavanoids
and bergamot Earl Grey tea, rutin-filled rind,
bitter but better than butter
as many people nowadays like marmalade instead.

Bless Valencia's nectar, and the ten commanded
segments of the Navel, so peelable,
so Ronald Reagan, America’s drink
as when he proclaimed, Morning in America
even though every orange has resisted rhyme
and probably always will

unlike apples which grapple
with their rhyme as haps in crab-apps.
Grannysmith bopped Newton on his grave noggin.
Poisoned was the Pink Lady from the witch’s shelf.
Tell that to William when his arrow split the apple
on the head of his quivering son.

By Jove, buy Jonathan, buy Jobs
ask any owner of a Mac
standing sentry at the gate.
They'd sooner be bitten by the snake
than expelled from the Eden
of their bitten Mac.

Peggy takes her Fuji with knife and claw;
I crunch mine, tooth to core
Gala, they hung forbidden on the know-no tree.
Delicious, was that first bite which brought
the wrath of God and homelessness
in that garden of apples and oranges, evil and good.



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