cattle farming

suddenly, i realized that when i take my coffee
i flick my brown sugar packets just like a junkie flicks the needle
though i flinch to see parents feed their kids to pennywise the clown, referring to him as ronald while they're consumed by their meals to make him happy

for a hundred years we've been lied to about the meaning of "healthy",
because what's good for the economy
isn't what's good for our bodies

rather we stand strapped in to our factory line in industrial paradise
while waiting for the animals on theirs to be chopped into shapes and sizes that we don't recognize before being fed into ours
we're hooked up to suction cups to be milked for our money as we're drawn into the mouth of the medical machine
that connects asses to hearts so that we can last just a little bit longer
that connects tubes of little pills to our pockets as we pass on by
keeping us drugged as we circle around
back to the beginning again

kafka himself couldn't have invented a better abattoir
one in which we wield the knives on ourselves,
one in which we fight to stay on the line
convincing ourselves that it's dangerous to leave

*that's* the power of money, psychological warfare waged in the name of marketing,
corporate influence over academic publishing and an almost fanatical devotion to the decadence of self-destructive gluttony

so forgive me, vegans, when i stand before you,
after you've so bravely tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge
stepped down off the line,
freed yourself from bondage,
forgive me
for standing here with a puzzled look on my face as you spray snake's venom
and tell me that if i turn back i'll be transformed into a pillar of salt
that those still enslaved are not worthy of redemption
while you storm back and forth frothing at the mouth
shouting traumatic truths at the savagely blinded and wondering why they cringe and flail and defend themselves

you take candy from the mouths of babes but call *their* cries cruel,
when you could be whispering your secret knowledge into their ears to ease their eyelids open

well, i don't want any part of that
so i'm going to form my own little club
and instead of blaming the victims
we're going to take this machine apart
screw by screw
and maybe someday we can shut this factory down
and return to that greener pasture where we shamelessly gave names to *all* the animals