Butchery

To most who look,
Poetry looks a glorious act,
A noble act,
But it’s a lie,
It is butchery,

I hack and cleave,
Words into prime cuts,
Punctuation into mince,
It is a foul process,
The table glistens with grease and crimson,

Exsanguinate the prose,
And remove narrative viscera,
Carve a strip of exposition there,
And rend from it superfluous fat,
My pen thirsts for more,

Boiling bones of expression,
Reducing them to grist for future ventures,
Everything is red,
The grisly work is done,
For the punters to love and hate,

Caked in blood and gore,
Of projects discarded,
I am no writer,
No poet,
I am a butcher.