AN ODE TO PORK Oh PORK! Oh PORK! Gourmet delight! My food by day, my dreams by night. To carve, to slice, to dice you up - pureed in a blender and sipped from a cup. What shining deity from Olympus knelt down to the earth and hog butt smelt? Creating then man's eternal desire for swine entrails congealed by fire. On some corporate farm, a pig has died. Eyes, tongue, and snout end up inside that cube of PORK hidden in the can I now hold in my trembling hand. More than mere food, PORK is for me a hedonistic expression of gluttonous glee. Mottled with pork fat, the pink cube engrosses. My mouth takes it in, my intestine disposes. Long have my arteries clogged to the sound of sizzling PORK when there's no one around - furtively chewing or swallowing whole. Triple bypass by forty, my medical goal. Other processed meat products I've tried or declined Vienna Sausages, Treet, even pig's feet in brine. Though each may be tasty in different ways, none matches PORK for gelatinous glaze. All hail the PORK!!!