Saturday, April 2, 2011

My Heart is in the Slaughterhouse

Quick background: This poem is inspired by (and titled after) something I heard someone say while visiting UCSD.  It was a great moment in unintentional poetry, and I felt compelled to turn it into a full-blown poem.  Reader beware, this is the first poem I've written in, well, quite some time.

My heart is in the slaughterhouse,
My soul is on a plate.
My eyes are in the lumber mill,
My mind is in a crate.
My arms are being mined for ore,
My senses shelved at every store,
“What will be left?” My lips implore,
Until they too are shaped and scored.

My heart was in the slaughterhouse,
And now it’s on a plate.
My soul, my mind, my very self
Are gone, and shipped first rate.
Commodity has offered me
The greatest gifts and lowest fees.
I buy and sell in twos and threes,
An existential potpourri!

My heart, myself, my slaughterhouse,
My mind, my soul, my arms, my lips,
Receding hair, decaying teeth,
Unbending knees, replacement hips.
What once I thought I could acquire
Has proven fake in the entire.
What’s left I thus commit to fire,
And watch the flames climb higher, higher.

My heart is in the dying embers,
My slaughterhouse is gone.
My eyes are in the dying embers,
My lumber mill is gone.
My arms are in the dying embers,
My stores, my shelves and selves are gone.
My lips, the last of the dying embers,
And when the embers die,
The ashes of my entire being
Will settle, will disperse, will lie.
And why?

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