Beasts

 "As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields." -- Leo Tolstoy

 

Beasts

 

In the old black and white movies

the aliens were heartless and cruel.

They didn’t care

about me and you,

they just wanted what they wanted

and if you got in their way, you were food.

 

At the table that night we laughed

relieved that it wasn’t all true

and ate every bite of beef stew.

 

Oh, the killing places have thick walls

and the battlefields are so far away

nothing touches us,

nothing gets in the way

of a good time…

 

We watch movies from the old war

and see what the fascists had done,

the camps and the cages

gas chambers and ovens

and nausea grips us, their evil appalls;

if you got in the way, you were meat

rot that just got thrown away.

 

And, when bullets ripped through the classroom

when innocent first-graders died

we gasped in horror at the evening news

“what is wrong with our country?”

and tore the legs off a carcass to feed.

No, nothing gets in the way,

not compassion and not common sense,

of a good time.

 

No, we don’t want to see

seared beaks and cramped cages,

cattle who struggle and dangle

by their legs as they’re bled;

dolphins who die drowned in blood

the screams of their young in their ears…

 

 

 

 

The holocaust of everyday:

They’re put on a track to die

Life is all horror and misery

Not a flicker of hope in their eyes

Until throats are cut and they’re bled

if they’re lucky.

 

The great wheel turns again

Relentlessly grinding our humanity down

We don’t want to see the cost

The stench in the air that kills us.

 

We should have everything that we want

fast food, cancer, diabetes

dead skin to put on our feet

a heart attack where we lie on the couch

watching death on the evening news.

Nothing gets in the way

of our good time.

 

No, there are no glamorous vampires.

There are monsters in many ways;

waters that flow with bacteria

wars rolling forever, like blood;

the din of agonized dying,

the laughter and cheers at the game

where a beautiful creature must die

slowly

degraded, alone.

 

No, there’s nothing we won’t to do

No matter how ugly and cruel,

Because nothing will get in the way

of our good time.