Camp Winton Songbook
SPAM Poem
by John Strong
Oh SPAM! Oh SPAM! Gourmet delight!
My food by day, my dreams by night.
To carve, to slice, to dice you up -
pureed in a blender and sipped from a cup.
What shining deity from Olympus knelt
down to the earth and hog butt smelt?
Creating then man's eternal desire
for swine entrails congealed by fire.
On some corporate farm, a pig has died.
Eyes, tongue, and snout end up inside
that cube of SPAM hidden in the can
I now hold in my trembling hand.
More than mere food, SPAM is for me
a hedonistic expression of gluttonous glee.
Mottled with pork fat, the pink cube engrosses.
My mouth takes it in, my intestine disposes.
Long have my arteries clogged to the sound
of sizzling SPAM when there's no one around -
furtively chewing or swallowing whole.
Triple bypass by forty, my medical goal.
Other processed meat products I've tried or declined
Vienna Sausages, Treet, even pig's feet in brine.
Though each may be tasty in different ways,
none matches SPAM for gelatinous glaze.
That glistening pinkness beckons me
with gristle, fat, and BHT.
Oh Spam, my Spam - the taste, the smell -
The sacred meat product from Hormel.