Raven, not
To put too fine a point on it,
Was starving.
That was when he saw,
Wavering in the haze,
The striped awning
Of God's butcher's shop.
He stood at the window
And drooled, his saliva sizzling
On the hot tarmac.
Inside he could see God honing a cleaver
On a worn leather strop.
God smiled, fat as a blown beachball
In his blue and white apron.
The slab was strewn with joints
Hacked from the offspring of the Ark,
As pretty a heap of limp carrion
As Raven ever saw,
Glistening red on the smooth marble.
(But there was one animal missing).
Raven uttered a single squawk of delight.
His eye misted red
And, faint from hunger,
He flapped over the threshold.
Suddenly, in the cool and shade of the shop,
He remembered he was penniless.
Too poor to pay&mdash
He swooped.
There was a brief bloody flurry
Of black wings, red meat, and a steel blade.
And then stillness.

Shaking down his feathers all round,
Raven began to peck at the fresh,
Faintly steaming,
Flesh of God.