This is Plahm at maximum play—a poem that refuses to take itself seriously while smuggling in genuine emotion under a chocolate-stained cape. The structure is deliberately scrambled: the comic strip leads, followed by Part II (the love poem), then Part I (the tummy ache origin story), creating a reverse-chronology where the reader experiences the sugar high before the cause. The Batman section is pure comic-book onomatopoeia joy: “KaPow! / KaWham! / KaBiff!” escalating through “KaCrunch! / KaZounds! / KaSplatter!” before decelerating into “KaMelt. / KaDrizzle. / Ka—?” The “Ka—?” is the comic strip equivalent of a record scratch, and the reveal—”KACHOCOLATE!!!”—is earned by the buildup. “Holy cacao, Robin!” is a perfect Adam West–era pun, and the “Adam, we miss you” at the close is a genuinely tender tribute to the campy 1960s Batman, framing the entire poem as an act of affectionate nostalgia. Part II, “Love is a Gold Rush,” is where the poem reveals its emotional core. The falling (“fall, / fall, / fall”) into dream leads to a gold-prospector metaphor: pans and sieves, the thrill of the nugget, “its gleam blinding, / its weight anchoring your palm.” The Muse is the gold strike—24-karat, cradle-worthy, breathing in the speaker’s arms. The closing pivot back to chocolate—”enveloping me / like molten chocolate”—stitches the love poem to the comic strip, revealing that chocolate and the Muse are the same indulgence, the same addiction, the same sweet dark surrender. Part I, “That Tummy Ache,” is the confessional origin: the speaker inventories possible culprits (wine, apple, raspberries, oolong tea) before admitting the truth—”It was my weakness— / addiction—love— / all-consuming desire.” Chocolate is described as “cocoa and sin,” flavonoids are dismissed as “just alibis,” and the final admission—”Did I just devour that whole thing? / Yes, I did”—reads as both a chocolate confession and a love confession. The poem’s genius is in its layering: chocolate is a metaphor for the Muse, the Muse is a metaphor for chocolate, and the tummy ache is what happens when you can’t resist either one.

A poem that proves Plahm’s range extends from the epic synesthesia suite to full-blown comic-book lunacy—and that the lunacy contains just as much emotional truth. The three-part reverse-chronology structure is a clever formal choice: by placing the sugar high before the origin story, the poem mimics the experience of chocolate itself—rush first, consequences later. The Batman section is the catalog’s most purely entertaining passage. The “Ka-” prefix builds a delightful vocabulary (KaPow, KaWham, KaCrunch, KaMelt, KaDrizzle) that peaks with “KACHOCOLATE!!!”—an invented onomatopoeia that somehow sounds exactly right. “Holy cacao, Robin!” is the poem’s funniest line and its most loving tribute to Adam West’s Batman, where every exclamation was simultaneously ridiculous and earnest. The “Adam, we miss you” coda converts the parody into elegy in four words. Part II’s gold-rush metaphor is the poem’s most lyrically accomplished section: the prospector imagery (pans, sieves, nuggets, gleam, weight) grounds the love poem in physical specificity, and “its weight anchoring your palm” is a beautiful description of what it feels like to hold something precious—both gold and a beloved’s hand. The bridge back to chocolate (“enveloping me / like molten chocolate”) is the structural stitch that holds the triptych together. Part I’s tummy-ache confession is the poem’s most honest section—the false inventory of innocent causes before the real admission (“my weakness— / addiction—love”) mirrors the way we rationalize indulgence before surrendering to it. “Forget the flavonoids— / just alibis” is a terrific line, dismissing the health justification with comic precision. The closing “Yes, I did” has the comic timing of a stand-up punchline and the weight of a genuine confession. A poem that proves you can melt Gotham and break your own heart with the same bar of chocolate.