Vegetables Have Feelings Too

The vegetables are weeping.
The fruits, in horror, screaming.
Bananas being skinned alive,
And carrot bodies steaming.
The oranges and the lemons
Crushed and squeezed until they bleed,
A fried potatopocalypse,
The green beans beg and plead.

All chopped up and diced and sliced,
Or boiled and broiled,
Or bagged and iced.
These plants,
They never had a chance,
They died without a second glance.
They're ripped from homes as they are born,
And here you sit just nibbling
On the corpses of the corn.

I'm standing up against vegetable abuse.
So I'll just eat some cake
And be excused.

-B.C. Byron

I often get poem requests from family members and friends. It helps to avoid writer’s block and challenges me in new ways when I’m constantly filling the idea bucket with not only my own creativity, but the wacky ideas of others, too. My family has some pretty awesome ideas. This one about tortured vegetables comes from my younger sister who was having corn on the cob with her family and her daughter remarked about the “big pile of corn corpses”. My sister texted me and asked if corn corpses was too morbid (creepy and gross) for a poem. I responded that it was, in fact, exactly the right amount of morbid for one of my poems and promptly set to work. If you’ve been following this blog, you know what I mean. I had finished the first draft of this poem just one day later. It had to be done. Someone needed to be the voice for these poor, poor veggies. Perhaps you will now be inspired to be sensitive soul who always reaches past the peas at the table and grabs a piece of ham or a cookie instead.

The drawing for this poem came along months later. That’s the usual order of things for me. Poem first, then the illustration. I’ve been poeming for about 4 years now, but only drawing for 2 and half years. Drawing has always been the more difficult part of this process and doesn’t come naturally for me. I’ll write a zinger of a poem and be so proud of it, then I realize the subject matter requires drawing something I have no idea how to create on paper (I draw these on paper, take a picture with my tablet, then retrace the whole thing in digital form). I sometimes feel daunted and let a poem sit around for a year or more with no illustration. If you look back through the history of this website, you’ll also see that I’ve redrawn and reposted most of the pictures here at least once and I’m learning to not let that fact bother me. That’s the nature of art. Always learning, tweaking, redoing, accepting some self-doubt. Let your talent sit and gather dust for a while. Be embarassed about a piece if you must. But one thing you should never, ever do is completely throw out what you’ve created. If an idea inspired you once, it will inspire you again later. A piece is never really done and can’t be perfect. Embrace this process and enjoy it. Don’t be afraid to retry or change something that didn’t work out the first time. That spark will be rediscoverd and light you up once more.