The bloody lump of thwarted rump,
the snotty membrane on the breast.
The pimpled, plucked; the pallid, slumped.
Hacked red bones and fur distressed.
No horror do I find in this,
So clearly dispatched, dead, deceased.
A sober sight, I s’pose it is,
But nothing’s there but slaughtered beast.
Now go a little lower down,
to subterranean larder shelves
where spiders weave a wiry town
and cookie in the darkness delves.
Turn the carousel around,
and furkle in the dusty racks,
for muddy treasures to be found
in secret drawers and cardboard sacks.
Here we come to things possessed
and neither quite alive nor dead...
Beetroot tits of fecund troll;
A flower died, and shed its soul,
a shameful secret in its wake-
Necrotic skins that flap and flake.
The sickly root celeriac’s
a tiny Frenchman’s heart attack!
Rice? Maggots. Beansprouts? Triffids.
Chick peas? Dehydrated brains of mice.
The truth is, if organic it is
seldom looking very nice.
The future’s in a shiny tin,
neatly stacked and long of life,
airless, clean and glistening-
Then open up and slime your knife.
Clean living? I see that’s your mantra.
On a Detolled kitchen top
jolly yogic gallivanters
line up veggies for the chop:
Green to shun the night’s excesses,
Red to scream, “now this must stop”,
White for hippy wedding dresses,
Priestly purple: final flop.
You see, this ostentatious healing
might at first restore a sense,
under shadows on the ceiling,
of long forgotten innocence,
before the dripping, sagging plaster
droops so low it skims your head
and brings about a quiet disaster:
Heedless, soulless, left for dead.
A clumsy thief will make you start;
an underworlder leaves no stain.
The hero stems a bleeding heart
while cancer courses through the veins!
If all this sounds a little black,
I urge you that we don’t forget
the little Frenchman’s heart attack,
for this strange world grows stranger yet.