Very Bad Poetry

They must have been barbaric, ancient mothers

who wrapped their crying children up in burlap

sacks and laid them down inside the cold

outside the gates of foreign cities in the night.

These women could not hide their cruel actions

and I wonder if, returning home, they cried

when other sons and daughters called them

“Mother”; when they went to start the meal

that could support only the few.

Tiny frozen bodies by the wayside

littering the highways made of dirt

an uncivil thought to culture now.

A modern eye is turned to new ethics,

applying better standards to our lives.

Now, the newly born are left in dumpsters,

soft flesh is pierced by rusting tin can lids

with the delicate caress of refried beans.

Swaddled in bright yellow burger wrappers,

the wanton lives are buried with our trash.

Or, little lungs fill up with toilet water,

bloating up with mother’s stale piss

and left to flop like tiring goldfish

in an un-flushed porcelain bowl-

because, unlike the biggest shit ever

squeezed out in public stalls, a baby

just won’t fit down septic tubes.

The dawn of technology to aid us,

nothing stands in the way as we progress

beyond the shame of public knowledge-

that unsupported young can die in private,

and mothers, now unburdened, dance at proms.

Phlactic Anna has published 2 more terrible poems since joining on 30/11/99. Read more of Phlactic's terrible poetry at the anthology. Here are three of Phlactic's latest works: