Cheese Champion

(After the Bottomless Cheese Wednesdays at Pick & Cheese, Covent Garden)

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” — G. K. Chesterton

The Mission: Get Your Money’s Worth.
The Method: Eat as much cheese coming off that conveyor belt as possible before 75 minutes is up.

Do you think I fuck around?
Do you think I’m going to
your bottomless cheese bar
without a completionist mindset?
All these idiots out here going on dates,
wasting their valuable time talking about
cheese, when instead they could be shoving
gruyere down their gullet, with crackers to boot.

And I’m starting with the most expensive plates
no matter what your “cheese story” suggests;
I am earning back my $40 and I am playing strats
that would make you bankrupt if anyone were like me.

You should be afraid
of how much gouda I consume,
how much charcuterie I can take
until I almost throw up on the sidewalk,
but I don’t. So I keep all the cheese I eat. 

You don’t see the five-mile walk that I took
to get here, preparing to be ravenous
by the time you offered me my first brie.
I’m running laps around you before you give me redlap.
I’m not savoring, I’m winning, and isn’t that right?

If you say I’m wrong, and that winning this game
is the satisfaction of learning something new 
and exploring the world around you, well, I would break you
if we went toe-to-toe cheese eating. Also, my favorite
was a goat cheese, and I was surprised because I usually
don’t like goat, mostly because my mother said she didn’t
and told me it tasted like a farm, but this one didn’t. So there,
I won in that metric too.