Steak and mushroom pie

Cancer: is meat the new cigarettes?

Camden New Journal, 5 April 2012

Let us play detective, like a character

from one of your throwaway novels.

Whodunit? Who sowed those mushroom spores?

Line up the suspects in stripes clutching placards

to their cancer-free chests: the man who blew

asbestos dust off worn brake shoes to save a bob

at Halfords, the man who once breathed through

Golden Virginia as though his pipe were a snorkel,

the man who fingered a thousand paperbacks,

benzene bleeding from every hackneyed cliché,

the man who furrowed a million miles

at the pile-inducing helm of a lead-excreting

Bedford diesel, or the one who fell foul

of a spiteful God. All or none of the above.

Now here’s the twist, the last page reveal,

your final meal will be your butcher’s gift.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet