Potatoes

It's all his fault!  Had Parmentier                           

not taught Europeans to eat potatoes                   

American teenagers wouldn't be fat.                     

They'd still be slender as snakes                           

slithering through dew-dawn grass          

to drink at  favorite watering holes.                                               

                       

The Prussians played their part in this black hole

in American experience. When Parmentier,

was captured  among the leaves of grass

of the Seven Years War, he was fed potatoes,

the fare the French fed their hogs, snakes

tempting their porkers to market fat.

That captive never forgot the fat

that saved him in the dark prison hole,

not even when clerics raised their snake-like

heads and denied  the pharmacist Parmentier

the right to garden potatoes

among  his other vegetative grasses.

As inevitable as the persistent grass,

the French caught on and voted the fatty

tuber edible. Ben Franklin even ate potatoes

as the guest of this mad scientist with a holy

obsession.  Wishing to convince, Parmentier

lured luminaries far and wide, snaking

his beguiling dishes into banquet halls,  snaking

his theories into mass production.  Like the grass

that sustains herds of  cattle, Parmentier's

efforts put fat

on famine-starved ribs, filled the holes

of 18th century stomachs with les pommes de terre.

Mashed and baked, salads and soups, his potatoes

left the table of necessity to swim in vats of grease, snakes

made crispy over flaming holes

withering Whitman's grass,

adding pounds of fat

never envisioned in the dreams of Parmentier.

Now, American culture is holy super-sized on French fried potatoes.

Wouldn't  Parmentier be surprised to know that he became the snake

in the grass duping a generation to fatten likes hogs for the slaughter?