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God of Chocolate, God of War


ISSUE:  Summer 2009


During World War II, the army consumed mass quantities of the Mars company’s new M&M candies, as the chocolate shells could withstand any climate.


Even the walking dead need sweets,
candy their meat

with peanuts in caramel like maggots
in amber. Harden them quick,

make them wicks that will light
when deprived

of softness, silence, chocolate
kisses for skinned and missing knees,

then hand over sugar, hand over home,
lay hope on hopeless tongues.

Lifelong users,
the dead-to-be are hungry.

Thank you businessman,
thank you marketing genius

for our daily confection of cocoa,
milky infection wriggling up

through grass and sand, ingested,
subject to you, extruding within us

your newly improved design.
Mars in the sky, Mars raising weapons

high above the bowed, bald heads,
hands them salvation, a taste

of reason, the battlefield’s heat
never meeting treated chocolate

within its Kevlar shell,
nested chocolate swelter marching across

open mouths, gobbling, melting,
misused mouths, meat to topple,

morale to season,
sugar to sweeten the meat.

The cities and suburbs and farms
reach out for you, god of chocolate.

They offer their spawn to you, god of war.
They open their lawns, their black,

worm-filled patches and overnight
hatch flags, up through dirt march toy prizes

for new broods, mass-marketed and sized,
perfectly fitted to a child’s soft hand.

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