Where WoRds WanDer #8: hot potato

A problem so controversial and sensitive that it is risky to deal with. For example, Gun control is a political hot potato. This term, dating from the mid-1800s, alludes to the only slightly older expression drop like a hot potato, meaning “to abandon something or someone quickly” (lest one be burned). The idiom alludes to the fact that cooked potatoes retain considerable heat because they contain a lot of water.

Poetry: THE NOTHING FACTORY

Nothing
But gun-metal plumes ascending
Some unseen stairway to
Heaven perhaps but certain
Hell for those caught in its
Smoky tendrils leaving
Nothing an no one
Unscathed
Residents bathed in
Rubber residue
As the endlessly resourceful
Touts seek their daily due
Who cares about clean
Air where
An extra buck can be scrounged
From the ever-malleable
Mounds of societal
Leavings
A government enjoying inaction tells
People to move out the man-made
Kitchen if the heat
Smoke
Dust
Overwhelm them
But its just not telling
Them where
They should go
Indeed they already know
What change life at the
Bottom of the totem pole
Brings
Their future swirl away in
Rings of smoke
Their spirits laid waste
To join the clutter
At Riverton