Breakfast

It's the first wave of hunger that gets you,
draws your stomach up to your skull
and kicks your brain onto your empty plate, 
turns talk to babel, the cafe into a jungle
wherein, if you had planned to eat
you are clearly lost.
Predatory anger rises. The waiter
looks somehow like bacon. 
Even tigers would be reasonable
if they weren't kept waiting so long.
Every plate is full but yours.
The fork begins to look like
a perfectly reasonable hunting implement.
The meal comes just before cannibalism,
madness, or divorce.

You eat and forget. You dream of lunch
to the anthem of the undulating tongue which has won the battle
and preserved the union. 

It's breakfast that gets you.