Famine

It's a beat as rhythm calls
for fractured verse and pickled rhyme
from quasi-poets in demiglace
to feed a hungry illiterate.

So set the table to feed them all
as they line the aisle, fill the room
all hand to mouth, this doggerel
to sate their pangs before they go

into the patter of iambic feet
to echo like a distant pain
the cadence call of sickly sweet,
a goose-step walk on rusted trail.

Pity the drivel as tears are shed
and hearts mired in shallow bowls,
imagine if they'd only been fed
something more than this empty plate.