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EATING WHAT WE KILL
Would it be fun
or at least interesting
to hate someone so well
that we could kill them?
The work starts with field dressing;
the smell of half-worked meat.
A deer smells bad enough
if we pop the stomach;
imagine the smell of someone
who eats McDonald's
or anchovies, or kidney pie
or drinks too much.
Like mother telling us
to wear clean underwear
in case we are struck by a car,
our pathologist insists
we eat only foliage
before heading for school
the morning before Columbine.
Those soldiers in Fallujah
they were smart
cooking the human flesh
with white phosphorus
although they ate not a bite
nor cleaned their kill.
And there was no hate there.
“It's just a job, ma'am.”
“Nothing personal.”
“Please stop screaming.”
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to kill with a conscience, to kill the conscience in order to kill the flesh.
to claim never to have killed on purpose, when admitting to eating meat is indirectly blind-sided. meat seldom comes from live beings.
yes, i still eat some occasional animal protein, deer offerings and rabbit, sorry red, i prefer mine wild and hormone free. got my own hormone, thanks.
this could tip me totally to the garden side of foods.
and when i meet my end, let me be McD free. with clean underwear. THANKS. |
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| Are you also a vegeterian? I love the underlining idea of blind killing behind the act of eating flesh - and the paralel between killing animals and burning humans in war with phosphorus. Very poignant, very subtle. |
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I think the expression "to hate someone so well/that we could kill them" sets the ironic tone for the entire piece. Rather brilliant.
To kill is certainly not always a crime, although to say that always rings hollow in some crevice of the sensitive mind.
There is a comfort in seeing life as a whole, as many mystics and animists do, and being "philosophical" about the act of killing, but maintaining a more proactive attitude toward the moral duty to preserve life certainly presents us with greater challenges.
Soldiers are trained to kill on command, only when "necessary," etc. but the wish to avoid the screaming--the reminder that it truly IS personal--can never be totally swept aside.
Actually the soldier who kills always, in a sense, has to "eat" some of that kill, "eat" it in the sense of assimilating the fact, the memory, the haunting, of that act into his or her being, yes? At least, as human beings, not animals who kill with no remorse, it is to be hoped so.
Even to deal out death to one who "deserves it" is to eat soul-bitterness--at the most a necessary evil...
Blessings? |
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| I try very hard not to hate anyone no matter how nasty they may have been to me, I really dont think I could eat someone I disliked that much! I must admit I do eat meat but I have never killed anything on purpose, I remember once running over a baby rabbit in my car and it made me ill! The poem was very good though and thought provoking, I do hate war though... |
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| Ugh. I can imagine popping open the stomach of someone who has just had a huge meal of McDonald's. It is a nauseating thought, but I am enjoying the fact that your writing is able to bring about so many different reactions. |
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