Eating Ants

From The Body's Question: Poems Tracey K Smith US Poet Laureate 2018

Ants love sweets. I relate. I relate.

Crave is me.

Save the colony, are they.

Alone in my honey ...

Swarms about my crumbs ...

My home in their planet.

He chides. More Protein.

Eat more insects, scientists say. 

I am without their predictability
a persistent pheromone informed calculus 
I am tornado like shadowing above them 
in my fear of itchy contamination. 

It is in my head: automatic negative thoughts.
Bait them, slow to the queen they go. 
No.

Voices in my head;
I'd rather not kill the ants but I do want to be rid'f 'em. 
What of an Option B?

Mock (giggle)
Eat ANTS.

Chorus
We need ants.

Refrain 
There is science! 

Yuck surfaces from my gut's own microbiome.


I am not at the ready to extinguish life
to partner with residual guilt
I am open to sharing space with planet savers
oblivious to true knowing

It is in my heart: be mindful
seductively resilience comes among the pharmakons 
vinegar and cinnamon.

Notes: 
This poem evolved from a satirical exchange about real life ants in the kitchen. While writing I encountered nudges on this poems' purpose as I try to wedge into my life more time for poem-ing. 
After a chat with a local poet I seek and find again the inaugural reading by Tracy K Smith. I scan and listen soon to hear the poetic reference to ants and purpose and reach Joy and poem such that "The body is memory". 
In my next attempt to squeeze in some writing time - I listen with some disappointment to Dr. Daniel Amen reading of his children's book. 
Distracted from life-balance again by tasks at the intersection of me and work [In chunks it appeared on my LinkedIn while posting my 5th anniversary search for collaborators] I click; nudged by prior knowing through Community TV curation and a friend who often connects me to a world bigger than my box. I take time to listen to informing promotional videos by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg about the nonprofit Option B which just so happens to be more on what to do about ANT specifically when beset by trauma.

And as I revel in the puzzling of words, word usage examples play along: 

mindful eating will allow you to savor your food and eat more intuitively rather than emotionally

and end in a surreal wrap-up with the term pharmakon (Jacques Derrida Plato's Pharmacy) and inference by David Foster Wallace 

The self-conscious appearance of unself-consciousness is the grand illusion behind TV's mirror-hall of illusions; and, for us, the Audience, it is both medicine and poison