Poetry by Lyons McBean

“Eulogy for a Discarded Lingua Taco”

            By Lyons McBean

I didn’t want to die.

And I didn’t understand.

But as I sat at the right hand of God

she explained the workings of the food chain

how the universe must survive and thrive

and what sacrifice is imposed on those of us

who are meat by the “natural order of things”

                 How nomadism became agrarianism, then agri-business,

             then became farming, then bazaars, and eventually fast food

             how some require food that they cannot be bothered to hunt,

       while other predators cannot bother to stop a frenetic day not-hunting

       to hold their food over steering wheels, thinking about something else,

 how they took my meat, so dear to me, and blended it with the meat of others

my flank, my shanks, ribs, my heart and soul, and something called my brisket.

After a post-lifetime of protest, I accept my place—

if not the justice of my desserts—

that my death fostered other lives,

and thereby life.

But then,

gazing down from shimmering bovine pearly gates

Lo!

in some dark factory basement where I never was in death or life,

casual spill into generic vat, callousness saved only by unawareness,

by some human eating a cheeseburger, thinking about something else,

cause leading by effect to further and further cause

there is scandal, and then apologies, investigations,

then abject discard, whose value is measured in dollars lost.

That frozen moment of eternal agony,

bolt impaled through the head,

and all future moments thereafter lost,

did not foster other lives, not life, not the food chain,

but along with countless of my comrades,

fed the hungry landfill.

- Lyons McBean. A native of Baltimore, I have lived all over the country and now reside in the Philadelphia area (actually, in Delaware, of which Philadelphia is just one big suburb). Although I consider myself mostly a writer of fiction, I have undertaken many different genres and subjects over the course of my career, from novels to poetry and from humor to sci-fi. My portfolio now contains one completed novel, two full-length scripts, and over 100 short stories and poems, as well as several other novels in various stages of completion. I also participate in the Tristate Writers Workshop (based out of West Chester, PA) twice a month, haunt a local poetry reading group monthly, and spend sometimes an hour a day scanning and leaving little snippets in various Facebook writing groups.

Copyright©2020 by Lyons McBean. All Rights Reserved.