Bloody Soup Again

I'm cooking the carnage, the Beelzebub Soup -

the unrinseable red of the claw, of the tooth.

Drips dry, half-sticky, in the heat of the stove;

my knife sinks uncleanly through gristle and bone.

And now brimming bloody, the vapouring pot

seems set on by ghosts come to watch themselves clot

in dark sultry spices, in blue spectral flame

and I ask – 'Aren't you glad that I've got your remains?

'I won't grill you dry till your flanks are like leather -

like artist and artwork we'll glory together.'

In the dim, in the candlelit kitchen before me

the spirits reduce to just one scowling genie

in silken red robes and a turban-shaped head;

his purpling frown seems to augur my death.

I shudder and hold up a spoon like a cross

'I'm a damned vegetarian,' cry I, 'You ass!

'This around me is beet, nothing more than mere roots -

I pretend I'm carnivorous-beastish for hoots.'

He glares at me, eyes red as beetroot-red fire

He opens his mouth and it yawns ever wider -

the inside I see is the velvety hue

of his ruby-fleshed worshippers and of my stew.

And gulping me whole he avenges his kind.

Then he washes me down with a beetroot-red wine.

*

(I wrote this one evening after making beetroot soup while listening to King Crimson)