Poem: Vegetarian

Seoul Sister
rooster in brown wooden coop
Photo by Artem Bali on Pexels.com

Memories of my sister

cooking Korean

chicken curry

Veins bones

muscles

thighs legs fat

blood dripping

on the cutting

board mat.

I was always vegetarian

ever since I was a child

I refused to eat meat

except seafood

but lately stress

has morphed me

to conform.

Workaholism is the norm.

Stress brings out

the monster

as I chew

I taste the flesh

see the cartilage

bone marrow

raw hide

underside

anatomy of life

butchered.

My mouth wants to spit

but my throat swallows.

They’re force fed

prisoners

some have never

seen the sun.

Caged domesticated

under artificial lights

and so are we

as we eat them

antibiotic poison

seeps through

invisible microbe assassins

re-pollute us

slowly incrementally

Revenge is absurd

and best served cold.

They’ve put animal genes

into GMO plants too so unless

it’s organic no one’s

vegetarian anymore.

We’re on the paleo planet

pretending to be hunters

the ancestor predators on top

with carts loaded up at

Whole Paycheck

with pretentious junk.

Animal holocaust

is connected to Earth crisis

We humans need to stop

eating living creatures

who feel just like us.

We need to start

being caretakers

of this hell on earth

mending the natural

ecology we’ve broken.

 

18 Comments

  1. As always, written brilliantly! Although, I support GMO but I agree that meat consumption should go down drastically, not only for health reasons but also, to curb severely damaging environmental impact.

    Like

  2. There’s so much wrong with commercial meat production and the culture of meat eating it’s hard to know where to start….certainly to survive as a species we need to change our food culture drastically

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I agree Jeremy, on several levels it’s wrong, ethically and ecologically. I think awareness is the start, how to stop the machine, public protest, refusal to support the system in place? I’m not sure…

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It’s a tough one. But this report (and recommendations) took three years to make…https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/eat-lancet-commission-summary-report/ I think there’s lot to like about to. Future focused etc…a key part of it is centred around eating much less meat. You can download the short PDF summary. It’s very well produced. I tried to summarise here! https://jeremyjameshongkong.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-planetary-health-diet-and-our-future/

        Liked by 1 person

    1. I think going back to hunting is a much better, more natural choice than the current factory system. I don’t want to force vegetarianism on everyone but I think the world would be more spiritually aware if we stopped eating meat. I think our polluted environment will actually be the reason that stops humans from eating meat, even ethically hunted meat won’t be safe to consume.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I despise farms that force animals to grow in confined spaces and inject them with antibiotics and hormones. I do respect people’s decision to eat as they wish. I don’t eat for spiritual reasons, simply for sustenance. Wild game and growing my own vegetables without pesticides give me a little peace of mind. Pollution will likely make eating all things (including vegetables grown outside) dangerous to eat at some point in time but it’s likely that we will be long dead and gone by then. I live in a very rural part of a rural province where pollution isn’t an issue like it is in a city. I do understand that pollution travels the globe and that one day it will reach here.

        Like

      2. Unfortunately I think it’s already here, even in rural areas, and it’s going to get worse unless we stop that reality. Our lifetimes might be the last that we’re still “human”. The pesticides, antibiotics, chemicals, waste are in the earth and water, everything is effected, there are no safe bubbles left.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. We’re pretty much beyond ridding the world of pollution even though some desperately try to reduce it. The larger the world population gets, the more strain we put on its resources. Forests will continued to be felled for housing and farmland and our landfills will become larger because we consume more now than we ever did. Just think of technology: how many cell phones has the average person owned and discarded since their advent? Lucky for me, my water supply is untainted and I get it tested every year for a number of possible pollutants and it’s a private well so no worries about chlorine. Many billions aren’t so lucky.

        Like

Comments are closed.