At high school, my form room was in ‘rural’ science
Penned lonely lambs and piglets
Next door, a’ squealing
Rows of jars of pickled baby animals
Broken hearts, mute organs and parts
You know, blood stains on the ceiling
By then the discipline had gone into a spin
From science to stock-tech for farmers
Then splat, a wozzle hit me, in my mind’s eye
We didnt think ‘meat fights’ would harm us
Well, kids will be kids, so whaddya expect
But already a fat veggie, I was the perfect, target
I still picture, that one fetal hedgehog by my desk
Prepared years before, for a dissection empirical
‘Lil’ Hoggy’, open eyes, stale pink feathery prickles
A pest, to detest, “NO SIR! That thing’s a bloody miracle!”
Detention! Good god! It’s not me who’s odd
“You’re unfit to teach kids… Killer’ Kane”
I smashed all the jars, into the sink
Liberated the spent souls, down the drain
Cruel world, I thought
Then cruel man, distraught
Time to abort?
But then a thought….
I chanced to monitor…
…Ten thermometers
Temperatures rising, a thousand degrees
And I flee
His brandy flask, now orbiting with mercury
Straight through ‘your’ body it will pass
Slicing ‘your’ organs, taking ‘your’ life
Out, through ‘your’ ass
Our futures would have been completely different
Had I frozen, chilled, or just coldly played along
But I bottled it, and snook back in
To hide his flask…
…But it had gone
(Sigh)
In any other ‘many’ world
That one, single split-decision
Be it forced, or free-willed
Would have wrecked, all my cognition