*I have to share this because it made me laugh, and in these uncertain, insane times we need laughs, peeps. Need. A take on Mary Oliver’s wonderful Wild Geese, which – as a reminder, begins, You don’t have to be good… this dark laugh is from Irish satirical poet, educator, activist and author Kevin Higgins, who died in 2023
You do not have to be bad.
There is no granite law of biology, physics
or chemistry that insists you must poke
your steaming snout into dinner plates and laps
not yours to investigate
for the possibility of nosh
or interspecies coitus.
Give me your list of humans
you found in the desert and tried to eat
and I will give you mine.
All the while the universe continues to expand
or slowly implode. Physicists differ
and regularly have televised wrestling matches
over matters such as this.
All the while the ocean’s temper rises
and occasionally abolishes
some island in the Pacific. But no matter.
All the while feral hogs like you drag
their bacon selves home.
However bigly you think of your self
history sizzles and spits like frying sausages,
takes you by the trotter
to your place in the butcher’s shop of things.
*We are living through an age of Orwellian piggery. Higgin’s obituary – linked below – is worth a read, and I personally related to it, at least this snippet, taken from an interview prior to his death, “I seem to have a real knack of making some people secretly want to kill me. I had it when I was a political activist and I appear to have retained it as a poet.” https://www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2023/01/21/obituary-kevin-higgins-a-poet-with-forensic-insight-and-that-common-touch/#:~:text=Died%3A%20January%2010th%2C%202023&text=The%20author%20of%20six%20collections,poetry%20festival%20Cúirt%20in%202003.