Honey Dews

There's an acidic taste to unripe strawberries
that can stir up your senses
like the faint scream of a blender.

Lately I've been taking bets on
grocery store honey dew melons,
which unsurprisingly so,
have almost all come up short.

Eating a bad honey dew
is like eating wet styrofoam.
It's like eating a dry, crunchy, gypsum sponge
that has been soaking in the limelight of a
middle-aged emerald,
floating in a stale, tropical lagoon.

The absence of flavor is astonishing.

It often takes the role of iceberg's slutty cousin,
wearing nothing but a wicker rind and some
sweet, misleading perfume.

Truth be told,
the honeydew smells better than she tastes.

And when I'm exploring a buffet,
and the honey dew is outside its natural habitat,
frolicking among a cornacopia of
kiwis, pineapples
and other tropical fructose,
I always strike my throngs into her mellow bosom
and give her an equal chance.

And if she beats the odds and actually delivers,
I make it a priority to spread the word.

"The honey dew is good," I will say,
"it's not crunchy and bland. It's pretty good this time."

However, despite the occassional revelation,
most of the retail store honey dews
I've breached
have fallen flat.

And more often than not,
the words of my memory are rendered strong:

Don't ever palaver with melons that
are manufactured to please the masses.

To eat one is to absorb the curse
of mediocrity.