Jello Biafra:

SLAUGHTERHOUSE MANTRA

Now now browned cattle, welcome to your training. Take off your shoes and come on in. Leave a check or credit card and everything you own at the front desk. Remember to be enlightened you must be free of all material possessions, so please don't hesitate to turn them all over to us. Now everyone lie down on the floor and relax. Let all that tension inside you, slowly exit your body through your fingers and your toes. Feel the energy flow out of them as though your toes and fingers are hollow jets. Imagine yourself floating in outer space. Your body cavity is completely hollow. You are in an atmosphere of soft white clouds, completely surrounded by endless balls of cotton. Now let that atmosphere slowly change to crushed velvet and let that open into a room filled with champagne. Can you feel the champagne bubbling up through your armpits and your sinuses? Now imagine the entire room is filled with urine and now - all is dry. The temperature is getting very very hot. You are Iying in an electric oven impaled on a roasting pan. Two slits have been cut in the sides of your body so the sizzling hot grease can exit freely. The metal pan underneath you is as hot as a pancake griddle. Feel your legs slowly begin to rise and swell like bread dough. Your blood is beginning to boil and bubble up through your body and out through the two slits cut in your sides, trickling down your ribcage until each droplet meets the roasting pan with a sharp hissing sound. The inside of your body has begun to solidify until finally you are cooked all the way to the center. Now you are Iying, piping hot inside on a cold china plate on a dining room table. The atmosphere is tablecloth formal. Several candles flicker up above you as hot gravy is slowly poured across your torso, running down your neck and sides and into the open slits. A freshly baked apple is wedged in your mouth slowly working its way between the gums of your teeth. You are surrounded by wafting smoke from lit cigarettes and several wine glasses filled with cold ice water.

Your grandmother's there. Your spoiled icky cousins are there. All your aunts and uncles are all there, dressed in their Sunday best. You guessed it, it's easter. Up above you hear a warm buzzing sound. Metal is vibrating across your stomach, the slithering quivering blade of the Hamilton Beach, electric knife slicing back and forth down through your mid-section, back and forth, sawing away at your backbone until it snaps. One by one, piece by piece, back and forth. Your roasted, juice-filled body is trimmed and sliced away a large two-pronged fork. Picks and gouges the last remaining gristle from your ribcage - til only your leftover bones remain piled on a sticky plate with soggy peas remnants of old potato. A warm breeze blows through your leftovers from a nearby heating duct. You are scraped off the plate with a greasy steak-knife - falling until you gently land on a soft bed of wadded napkins and paper towels in the metal garbage can outside. Loud reverberations of sound hammer at your inner ear as the lid of the garbage can is slammed shut. The stink of years of garbage is overwhelming. It is dark. You are all alone. Waiting. Hoping the claws of stray dogs won't screach at the outside of the garbage can like fingernails on a chalkboard. And the lid on top of the can is weighted down well enough that you won't find yourself, being french-kissed by a raccoons. It's a beautiful day in the neighbourhood.

Jello Biafra / Alternative Tentacles:
www.alternativetentacles.com

Thanks to Jello Biafra.