Cabbage

If smells were colors,
That stench was sea-foam green.
But that green sheen, over time,
Darkened to grasshopper-spittle brown.
Things had changed.

Once, a fresh breeze,
Smelling like newly-washed sheets,
Wafted through our halls.

For sure, a new ripening
Now rattled and tore my concentration
And I wondered even more:
Why all the stink?
The ubiquitous scent
Tainted everywhere I went.

Cousin Susan solved the puzzle,
And named the source of the purple fumes.
They oozed from Professor Barry O. Harry,
A noted scholar in full bloom.

His sweat, breath, bowels, and pores,
And more than this,
His books and stores
Showed what Professor Harry had become:

A stink factory.

As yet, I had never met this teacher,
This boiling beaker of distilled fanaticism.
But plugging my nose
And forgetting my fear,
My sophomore year,
I registered for his Cabbage 201 class.

When Dr. Harry shuffled into the lecture hall,
My lights flickered out.
My sun set.
Now his pungent gloom
Seeped into every corner of the room.

This one-food scholar
Ate nothing more than cabbage.
He crunched, slurped, and burped it every meal.
For variety, it was fried;
For vitamins, raw was tried.

Now, in his lectures,
Barry O. Harry insisted we
Eat, study, and interpret cabbage
Exactly as he.

Tilting slightly, the master carried his angular frame
On the oblique.
I see him now, plump and oily,
Moving slowly to the podium.

Standing silently for two minute,
Lifting lightly his broad nose to sniff the air.
Then, after adjusting his voice,
After looking sternly to the left and right,
This pompous chap was ready for a cabbage fight.