So Give Me Avocados

We attended a modest, but very well-attended luncheon benefit to fight hunger and help those in need around the world in numerous other projects such as AIDS relief, schools and educational funds and more. As I meditated on the issue of feeding the world I couldn't help but think how many mouths could be fed by feeding the grain to people instead of using it to fatten up cattle, pigs and fowl for just a fraction of those on this earth.

It's not usual to see a slam poet of this age pound out a message like this. I couldn't have said it better.

In the age in which we’re living,
There is ever more misgiving 

Over what is done to those who cannot speak. 

I was deaf to all their pain, 

So I knew not any shame, 

At eating 

For Three bodies 

A week. 

So give me avocados . . . 

Then I wondered if a child 

Could take a creature from the wild, 

Cut off its legs, then its skin, and its head? 

So we pay for hidden slaughter, 

While we teach our sons and daughters, 

Our habit 

Of eating the dead. 

So I’m O.K with avocados . . . 

And I’ll eat tofu burgers  

You can even give me black bean curd. 

But don’t give me no bread, 

If it’s wrapping the dead - 

The remains 

Of the body, of no bird. 

And how soon we’ve lost sight, 

Of how all said it’s right, 

For humans, as slaves, to be bred. 

For the animals it’s worse, 

We rend them thrice cursed: 

Take their children, 

Steal their milk 

And eat their dead .

It can be captives in a boat, 

It can be those without a vote, 

Do we ever see the evil of the day? 

For every piece of flesh we buy, 

We pay to breed the next to die, 

For as long 

As we look the other way. 

While it’s humans who need feeding 

The animals we’re breeding, 

Outnumber every human six to one 

Many children hardly eat 

Because their food has fed your meat 

While the blame For this shame 

You pass on!

 

But choice, you say, is your right 

That you can eat just as you like, 

And it’s merely an opinion that I voice. 

But your choice, - it kills so many; 

This opinion, not any. 

And your victims – 

You give them any choice? 

So there’s more to avocados...

And eating tofu burgers, 

Than minimizing illness – and your girth! 

No less than Einstein did resolve, 

From eating flesh we must evolve, 

Or mankind, he said, 

May not survive on earth! 

NO RAPPING THE DEAD ©.M. E.W. King. July 2006 & Apr 2009.