(MUOC) One Of These Days

One of These Days (An experiment in rhythm)

The storm raged.

The wind howled.

The rain fell.

The boat was tossed.
The net was set.
The fish were caught.
The net was hauled.
The fish were dropped into the hold.
The waves roll up against the boat.

SLAP!

My friend is washed overboard.
The sea is made of endless teardrops.
It takes life to make life.
It never ends.
It never stops.
Relentless.

Churning, rolling, boiling.
The sea gives.
The sea takes.
The waves crash.
Nature Laughs.
So do we.

SLAP!

The boat pulls into the dock.
A hose is dropped into the hold.
The fish are pumped onto a belt.
The fish are sorted into totes.

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

Welcome to the disembodied chaos that is my world.
Mountains of death that equal mountains of life.
Quivering masses of meat, slowly suffocating.
The madness has just started.
Nature is gone.
Now we are in the rhythm of the machine.

SLAP!
CRASH!
BANG!
BOOM!

The fish are dumped onto the table.
Their eye is lined up with the peg.
The lever is pushed.
Down comes the guillotine that lops off their head.
Out comes the knife that slits their belly.
Skilled fingers rip out the guts.
Save the eggs, they pay the bills.
Carcasses slides down the line.
We wash away the slime.

SPLASH!

Motors roar.
Engines whine.
Clocks tick away the time.
Metal screams.
The noise is more numbing than the cold.
We stand there, chained to our machines.
Dead meat cleaning dead meat.

SCRAPE!

The fish are put on trays.
The trays are weighed.
Then pulled into the freezer.

BLAST!

The trays are pulled to the glaze line.
The frozen fish are broken apart.
Nature is broken apart.

CRASH!

The frozen fish are dipped in water.
The water clings and freezes instantly.
The fish are encased in a thin layer of ice.

GLAZED!

Shoved into a bag.
Dropped into a box.
Thrown into a van.

WHAM!

It happened so fast, they don’t know they are dead yet.

The last thing I feel as the van drives away
Is a small sadistic smirk from a headless hunk of meat…

“One Of These Days I’m Going To Cut YOU Into Little Pieces.”

- - - -


(Authors note: Based upon Pink Floyd, “One Of These Days”)