Poetry in Motion

Warning: Disturbing images

You'd know it anywhere,
The smell of the dead.
But it doesn't last for long, 
For the touch of Death has passed and gone.

The trouble is that it's in the air,
The smell---it's there---lingering in your hair.
You take it home. Your dog backs off.
You hate it. It makes you cough.

On your clothes, it still remains,
Penetrating everything, as in your hair,
Stuck to the fibres in your bed.
It's everywhere when something's dead.

Now you wish you'd never found it
Lying in the woods dead for days.
Staggered in agony to run, to flee;
The bullet lodged firmly by Death's decree,

At last, to drop exhausted and weak
From loss of blood, unable to eat
Or drink again from a spring time stream,
To hear the blackbird 's song repeat again.

As it lay there, the flies came by,
Laid their eggs within her nose and eyes,
Maggots crawling deep inside
Eating her flesh, her tissues still alive.

But then, at last, the final breath,
Choked from her lungs in one final quest;
A shudder deep rooted clutched her throat
As Death stole her life's longing from its fragile cloak. 

Those hunters cared nothing for her pain,
Cared nothing for the torment in their game.
''It's fun to kill, as our guns will say,
If we miss, we'll kill another on another day!'' 

Seeing her move, I had some pointless hope,
But as I looked, her groin tore open as the maggots spoke.
They then spewed out, no longer eating, wriggling.
Millions upon the earth, some already pupating.

Two days passed when I returned to see
No sign of her body, no earth upturned,
For those hungry boars had taken her last remains,
Silenced that echo of her life only just proclaimed.