On Licorice - Sonnet 42 by Mark Wartenberg

A little liquorice packs quite a punch

Insidious sweetness with a salty sting

Black blissful oozing with a silken crunch

A tooth decay that tastes of blossoming;

It’s different than the other shit I suck

A harder taste, a faster flatter feel,

Like biting into sand (the ebb of muck

To press your tongue to might demand a kneel).

And after I have finished, I feel slick,

All licked and sucked and tickled from inside;

Invigorated and a little sick;

A vat of petrol sloshing side to side;

Diseased, quotidian, boring and agleam,

A little dirt can make you feel more clean.

Mark Wartenberg is a French/German/Indonesian writer and actor. He studied at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and is currently based in Berlin. He divides his time between performing in theatre and cabaret on one hand and writing musicals and poetry on the other.