Life is like a box of chocolates
Someone once said 
Sometimes you get 
The caramel-drenched centres
That melt in the mouth
Like liquid satin, swishing on your tongue
In silky, sweet tones
Caressing your taste buds until
Languidly, unhurriedly 
They lavish one last nectarous kiss
Before disappearing 
In ambrosial bliss
Down the tunnel of your throat

At others it’s the bitterness of a centre
That’s dark - 90% cacao
That unleashes on your tongue
Spearing, laughing, spearing again
Inflicting a bitter-sweet pain
Just enough for you to stop and think 
To wonder if this is good
A revelation 
Of taste, an experience 
That’s bold, distinct
To recall, to remember when 
You’re short on inspiration
Or whether in fact 
It is an assault no less
On the mundaneness 
The safeness 
On your everydayness
Plodding on your tongue
Like a thug that’s sold
His essence, his soul 
To the gods of gastronomic 
Absurdity and virulence

I look back, the rhyme is longer 
For the bitterness that lingers
In the mouth; but I have also realized 
That my taste buds have conspired 
With my mind to bind
Most of the time
To memories that are wholesome
Sugared, caramelised 
So even when I pick 
A chocolate from life’s mix
I hope for the sweetness 
The toffiness, the bliss
But I also sit in readiness
For the wave of bitterness 
That sometimes takes me in its grip
But always itinerant
Shifting, moving on
And so I too go on 
Savouring
Every piece, never wavering
From the cholocate box of life.