Poems and Prose by Marcus Ten Low

“Generation by Holocaust”
             By Marcus Ten Low

1 take a sanctified, personal experience
2 depersonalise and exploit the sex organs
3 remove the children and dispose of most of them
4 mutate the living and force them to secrete
5 kill them when they cannot give you profit
6 repeat the cycle


“An Animal Holocaust Survivor”
             By Marcus Ten Low

one fateful day,
you leapt from the back of a truck,
scrambled away on short stubby legs,
escaping off roads and into a thicket,
nosing for a brighter day,
each moment filled with courage;

and vegans took you,
embraced you, and gave you a home,
a bed of straw, and friends in a barn,
and each morning you sang—
you brought such joy to them
that words cannot express.


“Puffy”
             By Marcus Ten Low

One cold night, before Puffy the Turtle had a memory of his past, he floated down from the skies onto Earth. (Some witnesses say it was a comet, falling. It was not - it was Puffy.) His first recalled experiences were bawling his eyes dry, growing red and hangry, and seeking solace in the crypts of Mother Nature. He was now, officially, born.

The year was 2022, and Earth was a terrible place. Humans with guns and knives ruled the lands, the seas, and the air, and fought each other for control of these areas. They also fought with good humans, called vegans, who lived with them but did not enact violence against other species of animal. Puffy landed in sight of a little village of humans, at the outskirts of a city.

One day the wind grew stronger, and as it blew on the humans many of them had their houses and other things blown away or damaged. Puffy watched all of this from a distance, but laughed as one man chased his hat through a deep, dark forest. And as Puffy laughed, he felt himself grow larger, and larger, and lighter and lighter, and he began to float, and be taken up by the dancing wind...

Over hills and valleys, he floated, giddy with astonishment, for a long time, until one day he heard a voice crying...and saw another turtle, miserable, small and wretched, as the wind finally died down. He floated back down to Earth, and made friends with the other turtle, whose name was Tuttle.

“Why are you so sad?” asked Puffy. “I come from a farm, not far from here,” said Tuttle. “There are many of my brothers and sisters in cages, enslaved by humans.”

Puffy said bravely: “I will attempt to rescue them.” Together, Puffy and Tuttle trekked to the farm. There they were: thousands and thousands of caged turtles, trapped behind bars. They all looked young but drained of all pleasure, and so large for their years. Then, of a sudden, it started to rain heavily. The floods were coming.

Puffy understood that the floods were caused by humans polluting the Earth. And this made Puffy so sad that he cried, and then all of them that were watching him cried, and the cries made them all smaller and smaller until they were tiny little balls. The tears from the crying of all the turtles only added to the water levels rising. As little tiny balls, Puffy realised that they could slip between the bars of the cages and roll out, floating on the waves of the flood, and they did, more and more of them.

Puffy was so pleased that he grew quite large again, but he knew they had to escape. He summoned them all and told them, “In order to fly from this hellhole, you will need to think very hard of something very happy.” This they tried – they thought not only of the wonderful things that life gave them, but also for all the wonderful vegan humans that did not want suffering to happen on Earth...

And slowly, the many turtles grew larger and larger and became happier and happier...and, like bubbles, they all floated away from the wasteland that they called Earth.

- Marcus Ten Low is a vegantinatalist poet, intellectual and dreamer. His insight into veganism started during his isolated life at about age 15. His favourite animal activists include Humane Hancock and Ryuji Chua. He has been published with four animal advocacy poems (most still forthcoming) in Quadrant, and also campaigns for animal rights on TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.

Copyright©2022 by Marcus Ten Low. All Rights Reserved.