Beasts Of Burden Poem by Mark Heathcote

In honest hands, your world is embalmed-in-sleep.
Stars are put to bed where beasts of burden weep
The shadow that lingered all day long behind
returns to its water lily roots maligned.

It's here there are cries men carry to their grave
that falls into a melancholy malaise.
And make-a-bad-marriage with toil until death,
that haunts his every waking strenuous breath.

Such days as these-were-spent as marketed cattle
The price of which wouldn't warrant a gavel
rendered in harmony or disharmony,
Such hungry mouths don't dislike impartially.

They may be loyal to a point but beware
Ah, every soul on Earth is extraordinaire.
Such brutes and creatures can take retribution
and so become learned in jurisprudence.