J.H. DickinsonPoetry, Essays and Art By J.H. Dickinson From All-Creatures.org

 

Dialogue

I yell at you and our fight begins
We circle, hearts beating
And you turn away as I chant vegan
And you chant…carnivore
…vegan…carnivore
We go nowhere

I just want to talk
Invite you in, to a truth, a closeness,
From distanced visions of human hands,
And thrash of animal fight

I only want to say
Turning away
Does not prevent:

the packing of crates,
panting hot animal breath,
close suffocation, road journeys,
deep eyes of truth,
the pain of reality,
the blood flow from skin,
to visceral end

I only want to share
And ask you to embrace their plight
The body as commodity
The mother, the father, the child taken away
To see the distortion of innocence,
Of childhood, human memory:

of animals, of love
of bedtime stories,
envisioned happy-hoppy cottontails
and mooing cows,
of not knowing yet, what we ate

With each gobbled mouthful
Swallowing pain, ingesting a monetary system
Processing a friend,
Digesting a personality as
Individual as you, as me:

forgetting their blood,
their sweat, exhaustion,
their wide gaping eyes,
the botched executions,
their waking, mid slaughter

I only ask you to look at me, speak to me
Then turn to them
Their eyes, their beating hearts, their emotion
In a dialogue of silence, their desire to live
Alive with sentience:

To be understood and to understand
their own place in this world

I only ask, that you do not turn from me or them. I only ask, that you engage. 

Go on to: Don't close the doors
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