If we treated humans like we treat animals

Soylent Red

Merchant Ivory poachers
shoot Emma Thompson on set,
hunt down
Helena Bonham-Carter,
even sweet Winslet
for their perfect teeth,
roots ripped out for ornament,
(Austen adaptations are depopulated overnight)
cut off sex-symbols’ horns,
grind them down
into Shanghai aphrodisiacs,
while in Chelsea,
prize yummy-mummies
are plugged into
serried ranks of udder suction-cups –
never mind the pus,
just pump up the antibiotics,
stalls more cramped than
Wimbledon strawberry queues
or Fat Duck reservation lists.

Down side-streets,
the obese who cannot flee
are caught
and shackled for unanaesthetised liposuction –
oils and fatty acids,
heads vacuumed for human spermaceti,
vomited ambergris,
all essential ingredients
in soap, candles,
microwave meals –
any of low quality
or over-quota
are left to die
in the gutter
with the guts.

Post-war,
those deemed cowards, different or dissenting
are tasered,
hung upside-down
to writhe, groans ignored
as the throat-cutter comes –
contents drain into troughs.
Next door,
embryos
(wanted or unwanted, no-one asks)
are sorted by size,
stamped and dated,
boxed in 6s, 12s, even 24s
as spare baby boys
are minced en masse for happy meals,
just like the Somme
or Stalingrad.

The fur-farm
would give even
Josef Mengele nightmares.