written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Monday 24 September 2012

Culling Fields


Culling fields

What price a pint of milk, the fillet steak
must reach to keep the farmers from harm's wake
to save them from the cold, from being poor
is it the badger or the superstore?

For every pint of milk a pint of blood
it seems to be and so with toughest love
the bodies of wise beasts are found on roads
killed by cars that leave neat bullet holes.

Roll up, roll up, come hear the great grotesque
a cull signed off by those who ring no necks
but leave ten thousand carcasses or more
from their desks a simple signature; an all out species war.

And just like war, we find each day it is covered on TV
Spun into little half truths to persuade you and me
that this disease, Bovine TB (which is not even theirs)
is firstly a: inevitable, b: solely carried by wiry hairs.

This genocide, this fools prevention cannot be the cure
diseases grow, they multiply, there'll always be one more
Vaccinating is not an option, ask the great EU
and yet we'll fly in pesticides and peppers from Peru.

Feasible to think that those same veg could just grow here,
fields stocked full of each of them, food to last a year.
But the truth is the hand outs are better with disease ridden pets
so the farmers keep on growing beef, ignoring all the rest.

By easter, Springwatch will use infra red light
As the badgers get harder to find in the night
Then what next- the midges, the mozzies, the men?
For in truth, we are more diseased than all of them.


Shaun Brookes

The theme this week is The Colour Red, which is often not quite as black and white as you'd think. Thanks for reading, S. 

2 comments:

Ashley Lister said...

A powerful message. I can't even make a poor taste joke because it's a horribly serious subject.

Great post,

Ash

Damp incendiary device said...

Good stuff. Very well said.