The Inner Slaughter House

Stone-flint-walled, tall wooden gate

Withholding the beasts awaiting their fate

Walking past, steps a-quickening

Shortness of breath, cries so sickening

Nostrils assaulted, deaths’ putrid stench

Breathe through the mouth, stay the gut wrench

Now turn the corner, place it behind

As it leaves my sight, it leaves my mind

Stun and bleed, decap and split

Melt the pelt, wash away the shit

All the things we do not see

The inner slaughter house for you and for me

The years do not dim the memory within

Nor distance diminish the slaughter house din

It captured me then and captures me still

The place of all ending, the place we all kill

We all carry round this dark inner place

Where notions of evil are ready to trace

Where all that is heinous is waiting on-call

Kept for the now beyond stone-flint wall

Not easy to see o’er each other’s gate

Nor hear the howls as they resonate

From a place buried deep in history’s line

Blood floods the gulley’s, fear floods the mind