Vegetarian

I know I am not whole

And indeed my existence is a contradiction of all,

Stretching from pole to pole.

However, nor am I a midget, I little,

I have viscera to fill in but no brain to think.

I am a member of a rational being

Able to create things:

Propellers, machine engines,

Heavy hollow metals

That flies aided by artificial wings.

More, if you like, a submarine,

The size of a mountain,

In the face of it,

A sperm whale appears as tiny as a Sardine.

The roaring flying machine

And the slithering submarine,

Unlike a bird or a Sardine

Carry not only their own weight

But that of hundreds to an incredible distance and height,

In flight, from one spot

To another,

In and out the Planet.

And these, of courses give me the inner most

Satisfaction and delight,

I could ever come to think.

In short, you could say,

The species I belong to is the maker

Of its own creator,

Not only in the sense of the physical matters

Objects species desire,

But also in the spiritual essence,

That intangible and unseen

And yet illuminating, as a dawn light

Which guides the soul to the twinkling twilight

Where the heavenly God resides.

It has spread invisible spider webs,

Across the continents,

And indeed through intra-planets,

Electronic gadgets,

Sophisticated equipment

To help communicate,

And locate distant objects

Better than the gift of nature –

Ultrasonic magnetic elements,

That of a bat and buzzing insects.

However, however one may say,

One is at pain to reveal the undesirable face of the species,

When compared to other animals,

That have come and gone out of existence,

All shape and size,

Of varied agility and resilience,

One feels reduced to the size of tiny a Sardine

Measured against own made submarine.

Animals suffer no illusion,

Right from inception

They express their intention,

Without whatsoever cover-up or pretension.

The predators dress up no false image

To lure their prey into a cage.

Likewise the herbs, shrub and grass eaters,

They in fact are the beauty that has come of nature

Man compared, you could say, is the worst in the pecking order.

Needlessly, he has developed the taste

For blood and flesh,

And will stop at nothing

To quench his gorily thirst,

And carnivorous appetite.

Armed to the teeth,

He goes to hunt.

He sails day and night

Unscrupulously scooping marine lives with modern net;

And what is to come and this you may call worst,

He slits the throat of his domestic pets.

In a mass frenzied mood,

In a spiral arena high enough to touch the clouds

Thousands of oblivion crows huddled

Shutting, screaming, pushing each other and then pull

While in the middle

An innocent bull

Is unfairly confronted by a toreador,

In a red private hat made of fine wool

With a double edged sharp tool,

Then from the withers down to the chest

The poor creature is impaled.

And all these you could contest,

Is a needless pursuit

Against an animal that lives on herbs and plants

And does not cross mans road.

When man could possibly inspire his mind to invent

A family event,

An alternative leisure

No spillage of blood of others is required.

To propagate the myth

Of the survival of the fittest,

Some argue to the extent

That all these ruthless massacre

Is inevitable and proper.

It is evolutionarily propelled

Which has nothing to do with lack of will,

For it was, it could have easily been expelled.

But I say, these are clever excuses

Blood stain profits to disguise.

Hoarding countless carcasses

Well, beyond the immediate desire to feed the mouth,

Even if we admit carnivorousness is preordained.

First it was the split hooves that were worst hit

Following the preaching of the Old Testament.

Followers of Christ.

In the name their Father, the son and the Wholly Ghost

They take an oath to slit the throat

Of the animal present

Under their feet,

As humanely as they could.

With no evil intent

But only to drink the blood and break the flesh.

By asking the heavenly God bless the feast.

Amen.

Now mention anything that leaps and moves

Frog, crocodile

Alligator tail,

The testicle of a lion bull

A vermiform that crawls

Stretched on a stick then dried

A lizard is turned meal fried.

The slithering snake,

They all are in the menu

As a main dish or a snack.

Yes, when all these massacre

In the name of the survival of the fittest

Began to disgust,

Some of the carnivorous descendants.

They argued for a humane and descent

Execution of edible animals

Away from the public.

Or a liberal democrat argues in a court

For the introduction of a bill of animal right

That electric current should kill them

Or some kind of ballistic hit

Which makes death instant.

However, the appeal made the contradiction even worse,

Just as before, all the same the animals ended up in the same plates.

The trouble is:

And you should look at it

From the animals point.

What difference does it make

Be it cruel, humane or descent treatment,

If you are to be killed and your flesh to be burnt?

You get a slit on the throat,

Blood profuse non-stop,

By a knife of a Christian devout,

Or a Muslim fanatic brandishing a sword

And before you know it your head is jumping up and down severed.

I repeat,

A slit of a throat

The jugular severed

For blood to be split

So much so; it coagulates like a Persian carpet.

Flesh wide open cut,

The brain splattered by a ballistic hit,

Or a fatal convulsion from electric current,

Leading to internal haemorrhage,

Nice and tidy, no external

Blood spillage,

Thus, leaving the perpetrators’ self image

As humane and restorer of divine message

Whist at the same time insulating oneself from insanity’s damage.

A slit of the throat

Or perforation of the flesh by a bullet

Makes no difference to an animal under death threat.

In fact whatever method is deployed,

The pains that are caused are equivalent.

It can be argued

That, when an animal is fatally wounded

Except the pain caused by the fear of death

To leave beloved ones behind,

The initial act of onslaught

Brings no pain to the recipient.

True, there is no pain

Even when the head is chopped off

The limbs are jumping up and down in vain

Or the blood has come to rest

In the valves and the veins

By clever designs

Had there be any pain

People would not have cut their own wrist veins

And gently sleep to death in washing basins

For whatever reasons.

Pain one could argue, is a healing process

That takes place,

When a body struggles to recover from less fatal violence.

A fight to come back

Against germs that are out to attack,

The agony of birth of new cells

And the wounded in the act of being expelled,

Compounded by unwanted guests

If you like, the parasite lots.

No! There is no such a thing,

Death by humane means.

Perhaps it is to the perpetrator

Whose life is preserved

At the expense of the ones they kill and devour,

That the methods being used differ,

Some are violent and some are smother

So as to keep the nerves from being shattered.

Blood split and splattered, everywhere

Causes the nerves of the perpetrator to falter

And repeated act like these, overall

Will eventually cause the mind spin out of control.

Perhaps humane way to kill

Seems to reprieve ones own soul

From the torment of living in hell –

Drinking blood and chewing flesh of another animals.

But the truth remains,

That in blood he wallows

On flesh of others in grows

That there is no limit what he swallows

Even if it comes to the flesh of his own fellows.

Man, earlier on had began preparing the logic

Why this must be a good tactic,

Population growth from going ballistic.

In a small scale, he has done it before.

During the Second World War:

Human flesh mainly that of Jewish

Was turned soap for a wash.

Now I call upon thou to turn vegetarian

I know thou still won’t be whole.

Thou life is full of contradiction,

Stretching from pole to pole.

But at least thou could avoid,

Being a victim of ungrateful hole

Attached to thou part, thou cannot run from.

A bottomless bottom

Which stretches from the mouth to the rectum.

Crying foul play may turn hollow,

If injustice is done onto thou

To stop it how

Thou shall not know

If thou too practice injustice, to

Others in the pecking order below,

Unless thou stops right now,

But continues this thou allow.

Be a vegetarian

lave your sin clean.

ãHaileselassie Girmay

Draft July 1997