Fruit of a Bizarre Love Triangle (POW Prompt 3)

If I hedge thus a drooling wager and cash
in on my thrice-foiled cravings for her over-due bites
(plus a guilt-free laugh at his expense), I can
use minced steps to sidle around too-lively
trunks, and avoid the need to heed thugs
barking mad from within their crevice-laid traps.

How those bug-eyed brutes'll clamor and claw at me
to discard this protective wrap, clued in by my rep
of never bending willfully to anybody
but her. "Come on, shed! Get, uh, new set of scales,
for you we will -- promise!" is how she'd stammer,
roughly translating their not-so-twee chatter,

if she were there. Rather, in that lavishly apt way
she has, she'll be off picking suitable pelts
to adorn her newly uncovered, quite-public shames
while fending away an advancing clod, who won't go
easily, but who does go on ad nauseam with
a penchant for naming every God-damn thing

that haps vitally across his cocky path. Beyond
a simple relish of mischief, I'm doing this (mostly)
for her benefit. How could a persimmon
be forbidden, as if he had permission to make
such bargains? He's dismissed it as an ungainly fruit,
and mocked its likelihood to "lava thy lips"

with an orange pulp, but in that chance smattering lies
the matter to inflame my soul. I'll feed her
the pudding-fresh flesh, stripping it down
to its delectably small seeds, and in their splitting
I'll glean the silvery utensils to spill
a man's wholly worthless future. Let's tuck in.

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This piece is written (a little ahead of time) for the Poetry on Wednesday Prompt 3, and it will require some explanation. A passage from a Ted Hughes poem, in which he describes tasting a fresh peach at 25 (click the link to read it), was the initial inspiration, but my mind wandered into the realm of forbidden fruits and somehow interjected a persimmon into an alternate history of the Garden of Eden told from the serpent's point of view. Note that colored phrases in the text indicate anagrams I used for Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.