‘It’s nothing to do with mortality but it’s to do with the great beauty of the colour of meat’ So said Francis Bacon, an artist of the twentieth century, explaining why he painted scenes of gore and squalor. While admiring his sentiment, i would also postulate that Bacon’s appreciation for the colour of meat made him a connoisseur of the very mortality he pretended to eschew.

I consider myself a connoisseur of mortality. While my millions of brethren and sisteren

chew,
chew,
chew,

their way through whatever offal comes along comes along, inexorable but mindless, I preserve my energies for the sweetest meat: the carcass tainted by fear. The carcass that suffered the protracted death, the agonizing death. Meat crisped alive by fire, meat sliced open by steal.

Meat with a bullet in its gut.

Here in the slaughter house, I dine well.

It is everything to do with mortality.

It is the great beauty of the colour of meat, of its many colours:
the spongy purple of drowned flesh,

the translucent rose of fresh viscera,

the seething indigo of rot.

Bacon must have painted in the slaughterhouse. It is the great beauty of the flavour of meat, of its many flavours.

When we reduce a carcass to bone, we not only reveal its structure; we become composed of its elements. For most of the others, this is a matter of breaking down proteins and replenishing simple larval tissues. For me it’s a kind of catharsis. I take on the qualities of the deceased, i am nourished by his perceptions, and somehow I aid in releasing his soul.

Consequently, i have lived thousands of lives. I have memorised countless tomes, and written more than a few. I have constructed dynasties, then torn them down or watched them fall. I have been a foetus in a womb and a guru in a cave. I have digested the concepts of ‘freedom’ and ‘love’ and ‘eternity’ and excreted them, over and over again.

Men kill other men, sometimes for sport, sometimes for love, sometimes just sending them to the slaughterhouse to feed still more men – or, if left too long, to feed me and my kin. Each one thinks he has lived the worst of times, but nothing has ever been different.

I Curl in the slightly damaged brain of a young man who died for no particular reason, after a protracted and honourable hunt. The glistening whorls are dissolving, coming unglued, breaking down into their chemical components. I gorge myself on the primordial soup of his mind. The terrible realisation that dawned upon him at the moments of death sharpens the taste.

I become drunk on his flood of experiences and emotions. I synthesize his knowledge. I live his entire life in the time that it takes me to eat a path through his liquefying brain.

I wallow in his world.

I die his weary death.

As always, it makes me glad to be a maggot in the slaughter house, and not a man.

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This is the poem "In Vermis Veritas" by Poppy Z Brite

I got obsessed with this some time ago. It's one think to read it. Its a whole different thing listing to Brian Molko whispering it.

Isn't it nice?