Would You Like The Forearm Or The Bicep? Poem by Civ Clegg

“Would you like the forearm or the bicep? ”
He asked politely,
[Although I suppose he wouldn’t talk that way.
However for arguments sake
Lets assume that these cannibals - due to unknown external factors - exist in a cooperative community of sophistication.
And if it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination for you: the reader,
to believe that: the narrator,
(who just so happens to be the next course on a banquet of human flesh and skin) entertains an uncanny level of calm surveillance toward the unarguably dire situation that he is in.
“Well my dear boy, ” continued the better looking one,
“I always held quite a fancy for the fingers,
Little bite sized chunks of heaven! To die for! A delight!
When they are cooked just right,
One can suck the meat right off the bone,
Watch out for the nail though,
Catch it in your teeth,
You wouldn’t want to choke.”
“What you should do is grind them up.
I hear that a teaspoon in your morning coffee does wonders for the digestive system.”
“Is that so? ”
“That’s what I’m told,
Anything to keep the witch-doctor away.
Can’t get an appointment for love nor money these days! ”
“You know that’s funny,
My Matilda was ravaged by a puma last week, awful business.
Made all the worse by the queue stretching from here in the jungle, right down to the beach!
Four or five hours waiting we spent,
Hanging around before I realised she was dead.
Shame, we could have made her into a tasty spot of lunch,
But by then she was all dry bone and rotten meat.”
“Oh well that’s the heat,
Out there in the sun a human doesn’t keep,
You’re best to get the fire lit,
And cook them quick! ”
“Ha! Can’t argue with that!
We aren’t half a bunch of greedy folk!
Then again colonising an eco system with only humans for sustenance while at the same time somehow building and maintaining a solid social and public service infrastructure, is certainly no joke! ”
“Quite, the politics alone are a mine-field!
Who to eat, whom not to eat? ”
The sputtering and crackling meat smelt like pork, the captive thought,
I wonder if I’ll smell the same,
I suppose I won’t be able to judge it all that well, what with the horrendous pain, I'm sure to be in
And I guess this lot would just say that I smell of human anyway,
I haven’t seen many pigs around.