food tastes better when nothing had to die for it,
cry for it, lose its precious life for it.

your burger tastes like ******
your bacon like lives that were taken, shaken, foresaken.

you dig your polished fork into pork as you talk
about how the oceans are shrinking, sinking, wishful thinking.

you serve fish on a gleaming dish as you wish
that numbers of whales, eels, sharks and seals were not dwindling.

you spend time crying for the polar bears dying
as your bacon is frying, and it isn’t the only thing.

you gorge on tender beef although you aren’t the thief
that stole it’s very life from it.

you chit chat about mass extinction and animals dire fate
whilst the crux of the problem sits on your plate.

I could hear the echo of a ****** closing in, but from which direction
I could not for the life of me tell.
The caws and cries soothed my soul
And my eyes were closed,
So that I could immerse myself in a Yorkshire breeze
That gently brushed itself past the timeless trees.

With my wake came the crows
-Of which restored my sanity-
And each wingbeat brought yet another colour to the dusky sky,
As if time were something that could be carried.
A magpie,
A reminder of home,
Perched itself upon a fallen post and rattled furiously at how temporarily tranquil
I had become.

Then a charming mist made its way across the valley
But this only enhanced the clarity of my current surroundings.
The clouds in front of me began to wisp and merge like cigarette smoke against an ever-dimming lightbulb-
That reminds me,
I still need to get that fixed.

I noticed that my neighbours were cows,
Which I saw as a treat and a rarity,
Not in any way as a delicacy to be consumed and exploited for the good of humankind-
I digress.
Not the cows that I see everyday at, say, sixth form or in
Human form.
No, the cows that I usually see in packs
On supermarket shelves;
On butchers' racks
Before the people that behold them with hungry, selfish eyes.

As I gazed in this melancholy daze I knew that I would begin to miss the sight of those unsuspecting beasts from the minute I got back to where I was from-
To where I was born to live,
Unlike those in the fields that are
Born to die.
So then I swore to myself that I would never again
Look outside.

"I said I didn't love you,
I said I didn't want you,
but continued to act normal,
to extend common courtesies,
even--
in moments of weakness--
a certain kindness.

"The treatment failed.
Your sickness lingers.
Now you must feel the cold truth of my not loving you."

By Arcassin Burnham


The moon looks nice and the stars gleam bright
just as young as the night,
like the angels that appear in front of a fight,
for the wrong things in this cruel world that we spite,
rush the wind off a bike,
when a boy loves a girl he gives his all,
Every man in the world don't have bad tendencies,
Like a stand-up or a missed call,
and now the girl you had thinks you cheated while you stand tall,
head high,
love the person you are so you laugh and say bye,
tears fall down as she runs then she sighs,
if you think you were ******* then,
you trying be compassionate is a nice **** try,
now why'd you let her go? all she did was argue with her mother
in a broken home with an abusive step-dad in a ghetto neighborhood
where taxes break everybody down, nothing ever happens but shootings
up in the south zone,
did you dismiss all the bruises that her step-dad was giving her?
how about the time when her mother drove her to school
and did coke in the parking lot like it was okay for her,
Everybody knows your a cheater,
so what you got to hide besides the gonorrhea that you transmit to
every girl you had *** with,
Boy I'm glad she didn't catch it,
thinking , that if she did you were gonna catch an *** whooping.