Cake

Cakes, 1963 

Wayne Thiebaud

Cake

Look, you
want it
you devour it
and then, then
good as it was
you realize
it wasn't
what you
exactly
wanted
what you
wanted
exactly was
wanting 

Noah Eli Gordon

About this poem
"Small as it is, this poem deals with the continually fleeting and bewildering conditions of desire, fulfillment, ambition, guilt and happiness. There's some ambiguity in the ending, which can be read as both the lack of a direction or the direction of that which is lacking. Sometimes poets get to have their cake and eat it too."
-Noah Eli Gordon