Poet as Private Eye (When She Said Don't Waste Your Words They're Just Lies I Cried She Was Dead)

Always having gum on my shoe:
If I were Sherlock Holmes,
I could monkey out the person of the chewer
from the shape and indentation of the tooth marks.

Or add forensic analysis—
exactly whose saliva it bears:
It’s easy to dope out the ingredients of the gum
by procuring a package of Wrigley’s at the nearest SA;

then you can run tests to determine
the precise rate at which the glycerol
was broken down by the amylase enzyme.
Other tests will reveal if there is admixture

or contamination with another’s spit—
the gum picked up off the street and chewed again?—
more likely, a big sloppy kiss at a moment before he said,
“Your words are unclear, better spit out your gum.”

All can be told from a wad of gum you
might find stuck to the bottom of your shoe
(such a private place!) if your eye can discern it
and you have the tongue and teeth to speak it.