The Challenge – A Wild Revolt against Myself

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that “might is right.”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer – Enemies: A Love Story 

Meat eating is the most frequent way we interact with animals.

— Carol J. Adams – The Sexual Politics of Meat

Screams, whites of eyes,
blood geysers, plasma flowers
bloom on slaughterhouse walls,
hell’s carnage and crimson profits pool
on cement floors, fill sewer lines, sop soil,
spill over trawlers’ decks, staining oceans
heme red as gaping mouths open, shut, open—
gasping, gurgling.
Around the world, headless bodies thrash,
flip and jerk, spilling innards…

If you are what you eat,
then what was I?
I dare ask my complacent self. In time,
I found the courage to confess:
pure savagery!
Even though I paid others to do the
cruel work: enslave, rape, betray, kidnap,
terrify, slice throats and gut animals, who’d
had every right to live full lives un-
harmed by us,
robbery and murder fulfilled my base
off-base needless tastes, as there exists
no requirement to eat them, the
blameless, who suffer horrific
deeds to be forked over,
meal
after
meal.

For clarity—to imagine and ponder—
here’s a partial illustrated list of the trillions 
killed per year—ingredients for meals, 
TV cooking shows, and social media:

fish, lips torn by hooks and barb-
punctured brains, or who—caught 
in vast drag nets, drawn up from depths
so quickly, their organs burst—flop 
and flail in desperation, drowning 
in air to be filleted 
and eaten;

amputated pigs, scream in
pain as tails get docked and teeth 
ground down (no analgesic) to 
raw nerve endings, 
packed into pens or confined to small
crates on filthy, cold slabs, depressed, 
unable to nuzzle their young, to
save them from dire,
same fates; 

sick chickens de-
beaked with hot irons, 
feces-smeared, bred with too-
large breasts that topple them over 
into suffocating shit, and eggs from 
layers, laid in stinking sheds—their new-
born sons, useless to the industry, slide down 
chutes, cheeping with fright into spinning 
blades, pureed alive, or die slowly, suf-
focating in plastic garbage bags;

cattle, bolts shot into 
their brains, stunned, hung 
upside down, lynched—throats 
sliced open, hearts pumping, 
choke on draining blood,
legs jugging;

abducted calves and kids dragged 
from frantic mothers—so farmers can
sell their milk to us (the only species to 
consume a different species babies’ food).
Mothers bellowing, bleating heartsick, 
calling their young hauled off almost
the moment they’re born, who came 
of semen guns men thrust deep 
(to their elbows) into terrified 
cows, ewes, does, in
rape racks—again and 
again, molested—again
ripped off, they grieve 
for months until they can
bear no more, until their uteri
fall out, drag on fecal-smeared 
floors, then their wasted bodies 
ground up for hamburgers 
and meatloaf, 
survived by 

daughters slated, too, for 
plunder, and the male young—
bull calves and kids—who miss-
ing their moms, suckle killers’
fingers on the
way to slaughter—
little ones once eaten by me 
and currently by most of 
mine, probably by you 
and yours as veal and 
lamb with cabernet 
and mint sauce—
fine dining.

At last, aware, whom
did I become?
Sickened, I rebelled—a wild 
revolt against myself and the 
abject pleasure of feeding 
on customary evil—
tore apart delusions 
and stood anew—
determined.
Awake, relieved, feeling 
clean, I thrive not eating furred
finned, shelled, and winged kin, 
their eggs and their babies’ milk.  
(And no more grooming and cloth-
ing me with animal products
taken from and tested on 
them, as well.)

Vegetables, nuts and seeds, 
fruits and roots, flowers and 
grains, my nourishment—it took 
ten years for total cell regeneration. 
With every bite and purchase, 
I defy our most vile, racist 
debacle—
stealing lives of animals, whom 
we deem less and disposable 
whom we force breed only 
for our satisfaction.

I took stock, re/solved myself into 
a new story with a moral plot, in which
I grow compassion, its symbols: white 
jasmine, holy basil, peonies and
chamomile.
With plants, I purged the ravage of small 
farms and industrial, starved my path-
ology, day by day, 
but I do not erase old 
memories of my sins: 
lazy ignorance and narcissism—
of all the animals eaten and worn, 
of fishing—
a form of hunting by bait and kill— 
driving pigs to slaughter, and butcher-
ing a chicken. 
My remorse and shame yet hold, and 
always will. Reminders: burdens 
well-deserved. 

Atoning, reborn, reformed, 
ashamed, sorrowed, yet glad,
whole-foods-wholly flora-fed, this body 
moved on, crossed into a meta state beyond
the human species, remade with plants as i—
neither a greater nor a lesser being, but
a different matter, a novel kind—i, a lower-
case stance, practiced with humility and care—
who hears animals’ unfettered terror, embodies 
their agony and grief, feels them dying as human 
hands rip out, off, away from them what’s not 
ours-to-take for palate pleasure, fashion, mi-
litary training, cosmetics, blood sports, home 
décor, dryer sheets, paint, car seats—all 
vanity, all the while cooking this planet,
because, as the UN reports: raising 
animals for our plates and use cre-
ates most green-house gases—51%.

With this in mind,
will you revolt, too?