PITY AND PIGS

PITY AND PIGS

To those who eat meat, the pig offers such promise.

The range of porks and hams to be tasted, skinning

Over their souls claims reward. And yet the pig is not

Prized and kept in the most abject conditions,

Food seen as object, and the subject too, of each course.

For as well as pate, and pork, hams seeking cures,

Bacon, sausage, in New York they make brownies

With extracted sugars and fats, exorcised.

As if the actual murder in meat made each diner

A demon, unaware of both the fire and mire

And the mounting ire too as flesh fries. But this damns

Them now further still as Trump trounces all caution.

The need for provision through breakfast and all

Consuming greed holocausts. As on his command

The US Department of Agriculture speeds the process,

In which animal welfare conditions are leavened,

For Dad to rush home the bacon that will fry

And then bring possibly infected meat to each door.

There will be blood on the gates and on the plates

As they’re spinning. Cramming these pigs into mincers,

   

And the chickens as well towards blades.

The sacrificial lamb, sacred cow and sitting duck

Spent and squandered, procured through a sacrificing

Of safety, as precautions are deemed unimportant

In the wake of the fattened  and fur throttling needs

Of the face. Such is the haste this ‘fowl’ President feels

To run rampage - across ever sense, form and reason,

He is more the pig than these beasts, running wild

In the fields on which he would build a golf course,

Or McDonalds, so as the replenish his habits that prime

Both plumpness and power, and the pornographies

Of his pleasure, as he avoids public duty for the sake

Of yet more hate fed tweets.  No bird could sing

His soiled song, or speak of his failing grasp

On what matters.  For just as the pig lives in squalor,

It is this President who smears shit. Positively winding 

The wheel that turns the curly tails children favour

Into the slick processed flavour  that so many enjoy. 

Has God bit? Has whatever God is now looked down

And seen what has been done to creation? 

The circle of life and sad cycle is something on which

I have followed. But I wonder still, all the same

In a consumer’s world how to diet, as the savoured

Substance soon suffers and stomachs blossom

While dining off the hallowed.  As the animals scream,

The abattoir workers are sweating. The USDA

Has commanded that stocks must not cease.

And so the shop shelves cry out for replenishment,

Like a junky, and the President, as prime pusher, 

Pressurises the porcine and thus condemns those

Who eat. With the obesity there and here as well,

Think of Janeists. That near cult of eaters who simply

Sit and wait for the fruit - that must fall before them,

As if willed, and if it does not, they go hungry,

Closer to death as they’re waiting. Will we within Covid,

And during this Coronic age follow suit? For a ‘Coronic’

Irrigation differs from the fashionable bowel process.

While it clears gas and dairy, it also documents

What we were. A movement of mouths,

Made to pet and consume other mammals,

Depending  on them, through their sweetness

To save us all from life’s sour: as if every hour

Could be softly resolved within fur. Most people

Will continue to  eat animals. The Vegetarian

And Vegan cause fights this battle,

And in so doing there enter the chattel

And contorted cattle market of death.

But we can be ‘animalist’, or humane,

Were reason to reappear on the menu

And we instead roast the bastards who would

Have us all sizzling; nuked, twisted, sick,

As they sneer and spit at us proudly,

Their stench of ignorance salted

By both a complete lack of feeling

And an over fried baconed breath.

Trump’s a disease, along with the thinking

Behind him. He’d see us all trumped by fire,

Or in some vast microwave. But meanwhile,

The pigs and the ghettoised livestock will suffer.

As human need Nazis,

                                    No unkosher scent can be saved.

David Erdos, May 1st 2020

For more poems from David Erdos visit The Corona Diaries collection 

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world. His books include EASY VERSES FOR DIFFICULT TIMES, THE SCAR ON THE CLOUD, OIL ON SILVER, NEWS FROM MARS, CHANGING PLACES WITH LIGHT (penniless press) and BYZANTIUM with the photographer Max Reeves. He is a contributing editor for The International Times and maker of documentaries all over the world. David’s work has been acclaimed by many leading figures including Harold Pinter, Heathcote Williams, Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair in whose recent book THE LAST LONDON, David features. He can be reached at David.erdos@sky.com.

David Erdos

©    David Erdos has asserted his moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.