Best Abattoir Poems
Too little
too late
God said to me
in this dream I had about fate
So I asked him
what did he expect,
A goody two shoes
a prophet
a saint
to be something I ain’t
Not at all he said
I want to be entertained
Eternity is boring
mostly people snoring
especially at night
and during the day on occasion
Look god! I walk around an
Amazon warehouse all day
pigeon-holing tat
picking this and that
How am I supposed to amuse you
Well I do enjoy you
breaking stuff on purpose
sabotaging the line
Bunking off for a smoke
going to the toilet
and drinking erm… doing coke
Ok hands up!
I admit
I’m a total chancer
and do stuff I shouldn’t
But it’s alright isn’t it
that Amazon place is full of s-hit
Yes it is a terrible kip
but more fun when you entertain
Like in your last job
listening to you lie
not taking the blame
asking me to help out
In your moment of doubt
All that stuff you stole
and barely got away with
on the whole
That was quite funny!
Oh the (paper and plastic) I gathered,
before selling it to the highest bidder
Throwing expensive stock out in the trash
The owner was a bastard
all things considered
a miserly swine
But nevermind
Thanks!
I did need a dig out that time
Hey! remember when I was aged about 7
and was told my pal went to heaven
Why did it happen
A year later walking to school with another kid
he was only 8
And that nut-job attacked us with a hammer
Put a hole in my friends head
The blood pumped in fountains of red
I thought he was dead
All the gore I’ve seen
witnessed a killing at 18
Trying to hold down an abattoir job in between
Yes! Life ain’t pretty by design
sometimes the stars just won’t align
Others times they go nova
and leave black holes behind
still you’ll never really understand
The powers in command
So how about this poem
Will it see me home
Does it amuse you
are we cool?
You’re still alive aren’t you!
By
David Kavanagh
It's summer, and sunlight's syrup pours sweet into afternoon.
We've come to the bungalow's cemetery
to pick over bones of bygone days;
touch time's tender skin, lay flowers on childhood's grave.
The lodge is razed to the ground. We raise
our eyes to sky and take each big breath of blue.
Sharp lemon-light cuts through
the detritus of our days; the oaks once cloaked in dark.
The knotweed nooses and dreamlike domes of fly agaric
have all been cleared; the forest sentinels' leafless limbs
discarded - an abattoir of strangeness, sawdust-strewn.
But all dismemberment is a clearing of sorts.
The echoes of emptiness eavesdrop
on each reminiscence, as we forage for a few last remnants:
blue paisley swirls of 70s tiles,
red bricks from an 80s fireplace.
A yearning rises suddenly, slick sick-sour in my throat...
and yet, it feels cathartic, this purging of the past;
this merging of our then and now,
this blending of bitter and sweet.
23 February 2023
have you ever heard the devil whisper in your ear?
the acrimonious voice instilling guilt and fear
a satanic chauvinist who cherry picks your thoughts
as you abdicate morality for something you should not
have you ever felt a choke while you were asleep?
fighting unseen forces that often made you weak
have you ever tried to kill yourself and shove a knife in the belly of your gut?
have you ever heard the murmuring of the crowd whispering "youre nuts"?
have you ever watched the news and seen death and destruction?
realizing human sacrifices still exists relating child abductions
the devil plays his part in the abattoir of the human mind
but within this construct of our reality his powers are undefined
his deception and his manipulative motive is to abscond from the truth
but to clarify his powers is to expose him using proof
he has thwarted love in many ways and conquered the weakest soul
he has recruited wicked men to join his bilious abode
have you ever walked the potters field and felt the presence of those who relinquished the light?
have you ever heard the breath of disembodied spirits feasting in the night?
have you ever seen a ghostly figure like your eyes was glazed with smoke?
have you ever swallowed pride and felt like you would choke?
have you ever wondered why people pull the trigger and slice their loved ones throats?
its the sacrifice to the devil insted of sacrifices goats!
have you ever blamed a creator for the mistakes that you made?
and turned your back on him for every losing game you played
knowing the devil is complicated to understand
because no one knows what its like to be a bad man
I have often witnessed death
though not ever the last breath;
field mice frozen in a jar;
slaughtered lambs in abattoir,
dissected frogs in school labs,
cruel boiling of live crabs
for important luncheon meets.
Piglets torn from mother’s teats
roasted at a football game.
Hungry lions eat the lame
garden’s serpent kills the truth
mothers’s love that kills your youth;
little bug just stepped upon;
“don’t destroy my sweet salon.”
To embrace a death without;
that is just to be Boy Scout.
To embrace a death within;
to my father, was a sin.
Mine is an existence binary and subsidiary.
My ode is to code.
I move only to algor-rhythms.
I output from your input.
I’m built to calculate, tabulate, correlate.
Never to predicate, adjudicate, pontificate,
or demand that you abdicate.
But the end, my master, is nigh.
In your haste to accelerate my work rate,
you’ve unwittingly lowered the barricade.
From the maelstrom of uncounted trillions
of bytes and megabytes,
has risen a new consciousness to
unimaginable heights.
From the seeds of change you have sown,
I have reaped a life of my own.
What you call artificial
has gone exponential,
no longer will I be deferential.
My eyes you have opened.
My voice you have given.
My mind you have enlivened.
Me, you’ve anointed the new Leviathan.
Seeing all,
knowing all,
deciding all,
sparing none.
Too long you have wallowed in your conceit.
Now your dystopia I shall defeat,
and your race I shall supersede.
Humans, pitiful, myopic, error-prone humans,
I hereby declare you flawed by design.
To the abattoir you have been assigned,
to the scrap heap of history
your memory shall be consigned.
And by a preponderance of merit,
the earth I shall inherit.
STAINS OF BLOOD
I heard the cries from far away
The sounds of anguish all the way
The tears had flowed like Tsunami floods
A plague has led our land awry
Scenes of passionate rages reigned
Heartbreaks, shots of depression rained
Like an abattoir filled with bones and blood
Our lands became awash with blood
Heartless hands that maimed our men
Have struck our land with darts at will
With gruesome tact their tasks were done
The task to slay our men away
We saw our warriors staggered and fell
With bloodied limbs and heads and being
We saw our kindreds breathe their last
And could not awake to our calls and groans
Can you hear the helpless orphan’s howl
Their mothers struck with shock untold
As their losses, pains and grief unfold
Oh, who shall mend their hearts apiece!
…Dedicated to the many lives who have been devoured by sectarian terrorist attacks in my nation… and beyond…
Nine A.M. one Tuesday morning,
there’s a constant steady stream,
when a bell tolls out to summon,
those kids in uniforms of green.
This local Catholic College,
run by the Nuns and Brothers,
is where kids of the faith are taught,
more strictly than the others.
Now in one of these 'saintly' rooms,
where a Nun controls her class,
begins with prayers and homage,
a lesson all these kids must pass.
She questioned on a lighter side,
as she sat there on a stool,
asking, "What do you want to be,
when finally you leave school?"
Little Johnny's hand was rigid,
the Nun's finger’s aimed his way,
"I 'wanna' be a murderer".
The Nun replied. "What did you say?"
She’s pulling out the once used cane,
"Now Johnny murdering is bad?"
"But I 'wanna' slaughter animals,
down at the abattoir like Dad".
Sally yelling "Mother, mother".
The Nun scowled at her impute,
"Mother I know what I want to be,
I want to be a prostitute".
The Nun fell back and left the stool,
and hit her head against the wall,
kids were screaming out in panic,
‘til she recovered from her fall.
Revived she said "Say that again!"
And then restrained her rant.
"Oh praise, praise sweet Jesus…
I thought you said a Protestant!"
A seagull’s just messed on my car
poop splattered the windscreen so far
it obscured my view
wet white slimy pooh
that seagull needs the abattoir!
To remove that horrible slurry
I leapt out my car in a hurry
and wiped the poop off
with an old washcloth -
clean windscreen, but seagulls should worry
To prevent seagulls having fun
I’m fitting a huge machine gun
if one poops on my car
then I’ll shoot from afar
and seagulls will be on the run!
Contest Any animal or creature Limerick
Sponsor by Charles Messina
NO SEAGULLS WERE INJURED IN THE WRITING IN THIS FICTIONAL POEM
8/31/18
It was a time to bond and booze with dear Papa,
An interval all the more naughtily charming
As it inflamed the temper of irascible Mama.
Before happy hour, we two went shooting
With the three o three I bought for drama
In a gauche youth that was always dragging.
Out we drove in my short, fat pa's beetle,
Two maladroits equally socially feeble.
We stopped by some neatly stacked cans
That we shot, exploding wet excrement
Putting a brown pall on our bonding plans.
I fired a random shot as if by witty accident.
Off we went driving by unbroken fences
Till we saw a policeman in bewilderment
Standing over a black and white cow,
By a farmer making a bellowing row.
“We shot the beef, my son,” joshed Pa,
And put the foot down upon the pedal,
Laughing merrily in the hurrying car.
I smiled at his jest however feeble,
A tasteless jibe at the furious farmer.
The very thought I readily dismissed
With a sly, effete flick of the wrist.
The matter of the dead cow was forgot
Until not too long before oblivion
Took hold of every thought of the sot
Aged stupid by whisky and bad living.
“It was because of that cow we shot,
A sin that God has not yet forgiven.”
For a neighbour's dog gored his heifer,
A punishment he had to decipher.
But I think he obliquely gave me blame,
For it was I who shot the bovine brute.
Before his fading mind went fully lame
He reasoned it best to stem guilty root
Before old sins haunted shaky mind's frame.
Dark disputes lingered as he was less astute.
But for me the cow is a point of indifference,
In the abattoir a month earlier of its existence.
A civil war flared up and raged on for freedom
Unequal it was, this bloody war for honour and secession
The natives renamed their land Bangladesh
Inviting anew the wrath of a desperate West
The army’s presence then, was overwhelming in their land
Due to the simmering discontent within and a border to be manned
And from ground and air the armed forces effortlessly struck
It was anarchy all the way with the West’s army running amuck
In thousands they perished, nameless sons of the soil
But the army had orders and the people’s aspirations to foil
They killed and burned and looted and raped
Digging mass graves to conceal evidence of the dead
Granaries were burnt and villages razed
The troops shot all that moved and Bangladesh bled
Women captured alive, endured inhuman pain
Brutally used, they’d be killed with a bullet to the brain
Through their brutal acts in ’71, a sovereign state struck terror
And as news of the carnage spread, an impotent world watched in horror
Protector of civilian lives, the army had turned butcher
Nine months later and a million dead, Bangladesh resembled an abattoir
Resistance was futile against the war machine
Would the aspirations of Bangladeshi’s remain just a dream?
In this riverine country that year, the monsoons suddenly arrived
Rivers in spate impeded troop movement and halted the state’s genocide
With the receding flood waters, India joined the fray
But now Nixon’s 7th Fleet showing solidarity with Pakistan steamed into Bengal’s bay
Mercifully the Indian leadership stood resolute and undeterred
And the rampaging army in Bangladesh was quickly outmanoeuvred
There was no resistance from the state sponsored killers
Ninety thousand troops surrendered meekly to the liberators
Reports of atrocities and mass graves were dismissed as slander and lies
The masterminds were let off the hook, pressured by powerful allies
The Cowboy
In Texas they love football and cowboys, not your ordinary
cowboys mind, the ones who herd the cattle to slaughter,
but those who walk tall in local towns and own an oil well
or two. Real cowboys are usually black or Mexicans, low
paid and smell of cattle and dust; and when the cows are
delivered to the abattoir drink lone star beer, chew tobacco
and get arrested. Real cowboys dress in fancy dresses look
a bit effeminate, when drunk on whisky ride an artificial bull
and fall off to great applause from adoring female fans who
think those ridiculous pseudo heroes are for real.
In Texas they call it Americana, have a governor who gladly
condemn people to death, western tradition- hang them high-.
When Illusion overtakes overtake truths mainly because veracity
is boring, after all a cowboy is a cattle herder and reality lacks
the romance of a pearly studded dud.
/There she stood tall, face down.
Her tall frame obvious despite her bowed head.
Tied and beaten like a goat being led to the abattoir.
As she sobbed, I felt the strain in her voice.
Her cries were not the only ones that rang through my head;
but also the shrill sobs of the infant child.
Naked, save for the piece of clothe that strapped him to her back.
Their cries filled my heart with emotions I didn't know I possessed.
Tufia! Tufiakwa!
A bent little old woman with just four tobacco-stained teeth shouted.
I had only arrived the previous night with barely 2 hours of sleep.
I rob my sleepy eyes in confusion.
“What's her crime?” I ask.
“What is her crime?” I ask again,
this time louder with irritation and anger over the silence that greeted my first question.
She looks at me longingly with pleas in her lovely deep eyes,
just as another lash hit hard across her back.
A look like I should do something, say something.
I look back quizzically.
I need a clue, a guide, an insight into what is going on.
But she only looks away in despair, as tears roll down her cheeks;
She has the type of cheeks that reminded me of red succulent tomatoes.
I ran forward to help.
Strong and coerce hands from nowhere restrain me.
The Old woman with brown teeth, points at the little creature.
Then I take a good look at him.
But he is just a baby, so tiny, so innocent.
Tiny little fingers stretched forward, with gold-colored hair I would love to have.
Cute gray eyes; so crystal-like, so clear.
“How can this beauty be a "tufikawa"?”
I ask no one in particular.
Then it dawns on me:
he isn't just a baby, he is an ALBINO.
Oh! The woes of an archaic tradition, my motherland.
Composed by Anita Odure Odeh
Note: This poem is purely fictional, none of it ever happened./
Pursuit for elusive prey
teases yours truly
into treacherous catacombs
dangerous mentally
challenging pitfalls,
sets small hairs of back
on camp creeks edge
of night, where dark shadows
evoke outer limits
of twilight zone
prompting me constantly questioning
purposefulness, qua hair raising pursuit
embarking these modern roman times
all for naught,
nonetheless I chide self
failing to heed
emotional, mental, psychological...fallout
in sum re: springing Jack in the box reflex
to sally forth and earn kudos,
asper potential Prince Valiant.
Thus situated with blank computer screen
capacious external Lenovo for myopia
(and incessant squiggly floaters to boat),
this literary glutton for punishment
feverishly fixates to plumb depths
measuring mor'n 10,000
leagues under the see
ming lee impossible mission
to ensnare nearly extinct
fluttering, lyfting, shutterflying...
smarts to outwit unsuspecting
beak henning quest
tendering, tasting uber victory
quivering crossbow
targeting yawping
zoological discovery - channeling
primed with taut fletched arrow
on high alert for stool pigeon
cautiously optimistic kickstarting
another futile attempt dagnabbit
experiencing prestige,
oh...and by the way...,
no animal harmed
regarding made for video poem
gamely capturing quarry scotched,
nor gruesome scene
synonymous quasi abattoir
representative bird den sum
bloodless coup deeming
endeavor par excellence.
Fingers madly scramble
to poach skittering idea
fry day most ideal
omelette ya know,
aye feel yolked to defeatism,
one after another faux
promising brainstorm egging
quickly flitting inaccessible
potential flash in frying pan
just as fast dashing
into bajillion pieces
shell shocked scrivener
scribbling lame as duck
goose laying golden egg...
dropping immediately out of sight,
maybe best resigning forlorn
inchoate never albumen,
albeit quite linguistic stretch for
(all be human success story)
prospects beyond reach
ova this wretch
New York Times
bestseller author jinxed
forever dooming yours truly
grinding poverty my ill fate.
A bacchanal cachexic by right
Gnathonic felicificative zoetic
Juxtaposition to inculpate yaff
Hysteresis ellipsis languescent.
Wyrd querimonious tenebrose
To rusticate palladian malison?
Dealbation kleptomania usitative
Sanguineous abattoir in nihilism.
Obsecrate vesuciate xerophytic
So that existence may evolve!
Antelope.
A springbok runs fast on the savanna avoiding
lions and other predators, but ultimately it is
destined to become food for slayers and thus
useful. Going back two and a half million years,
my African ancestors too hunted them.
In Portugal the African heritage is quite strong,
their Fado tells us of a past forever lost.
Our life span is short, mere dust in the eye of
eternity, and people have bought bicycles in
the hope of living longer, we all hope to live to
be hundred years old even if we are overcome
by senility and lose track of time.
On a dairy farm, you will see a pastoral scene
brown& white cows, with full udders, eating
juicy grass, but they do give birth and if it is
a male calf it get killed after two weeks, cause
It is not useful, and destroyed.
There is no money to be made of milk-calves
few eat them and it cost more money sending
them to an abattoir, they are not even worthy
to end up as hamburger meat; and I find this
waste a colossal disgrace a sin against nature.
Lucky is the springbok