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<\/p>\nI hear so many screams
\nBestial cries
\nOf terror and pain
\nCut off
\nchoked out
\nthrottled
\nshocked into silence.
\nAnd death.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Death in obscurity and shadows
\nProduced on an assembly line
\nManufactured in factories,
\nIndustrialized
\nCommodified
\nWidgets
\nof flesh, blood, feather, bone
\nClipped beaks
\nDocked tails
\nAnd pools of blood and feces
\nTo bathe in on every square inch
\nOf the cold hard concrete floors.<\/p>\n
The whir of the machines
\nThe pneumatic jab of the bolt gun
\nThe buzz and sizzle of electrical water,
\nAll things hardwired into the machine.<\/p>\n
Cogs spin
\nGears scream
\nTeeth clench and lock and whirl
\nWheel within wheel
\nOf satanic mills whirling
\nVortexes sucking in flesh
\nGround up
\nButchered
\nChoice cuts separated
\nAnd the rest shipped overseas
\nUnwanted
\nBut worth something
\nSold or rendered
\nTo minimize waste
\nFor better returns on the dollar.<\/p>\n
What is the price
\nOf each life severed?
\nWhere does that figure
\nInto corporate projections
\nShareholder dividends
\nAnd stock-market ratings?<\/p>\n
Are the costs of those lives
\nOutsourced
\nExternalized
\nWritten off
\nSubsidized
\nAs the necessary costs
\ninevitable evils
\nOf the machine at work,
\nThe assembly line running
\nFrom field to table
\nfrom seed to fork
\nfrom soil to stomach?<\/p>\n
Show me.
\nI want to see them.
\nShow me the balance sheets.
\nShow me the assembly line.
\nLet me hear their cogwheels whirling.
\nLet me hear the teeth, the gun, the steely screams.
\nLet me know how your fortified food factory
\nthe Earth
\nRuns like a well-oiled
\nmachine
\nUnder the iron fist of your
\nSystematized
\nHomogenized
\nStreamlined
\nAssembly line.<\/p>\n
The doors of your factory are locked.
\nThe windows, like mistakes on the factory walls,
\nAre barred, locked, sealed, covered.
\nThere is barbwire atop the chain-link fences.
\nThe security guard is armed and refusing access.
\n(And are those snipers on the rooftop?)
\nBut all I want is
\nTo see
\nto hear
\nto smell
\nto know.<\/p>\n
The grocery-store packages, boxes, cans
\nAre dumb witnesses
\nSpeaking nothing
\nSilent like the guards outside your factories\u2014
\nI know because I have asked them,
\nInquired in vain
\nFor you have them well trained,
\nLike the people shuffling down the aisles,
\nAnd narrativized
\nThrough the PR department
\nIn which life becomes a widget
\nAnd then becomes a trope,
\nFarm to machine to idyll,
\nBuilt atop a humming machine.<\/p>\n
The farmers
\nShepherds
\nShamans
\nSatyrs
\nNymphs
\nDryads
\nAre now all clocked in
\nStanding in their places
\nAlong the line, day to day,
\nWith no overtime, awful wages,
\nAnd sure as hell no benefits.
\nFor they too are expendable,
\nA commodity
\nAn expense
\nWheel within wheel
\nObject upon object
\nAlong the line, day to day.<\/p>\n
I can hear the screams
\nOf the wheels, of the widgets,
\nStanding here beyond the arc lights
\nOutside of your fortified factory farm.
\nLet me in
\nlet me see
\nlet me hear.
\nLet me know.<\/p>\n
For I am not part of your machine.<\/p>\n