Animal Farm

This is kinder somehow.

A shotgun to the head,

Pow.

Like a third eye and

Them taking their final bow;

An easier good-bye.

With burdened bodies

And broken hind legs,

Death is a simpler way.

Only real cages

Create a cage with in;

Death takes them from this hell.

Peeled like walnut husks,

Their blood skins and stiff fur

Bleached and washed down the drain;

A careless insult of

All that salt and iron

Bathing in copper stench.

The living dead are near

With marred mouths shrieking, but

No one who cares will hear

Their language of fear with

Final cacophonies

Eulogies everywhere.

They smell their kin dying.

They all know their doom

Their families screaming,

And though their awkward tongues

Do not move as our own,

All of them repeating,

“We’re not here for slaughter,

We are here for you.

If you treat us kind,

We would die for you.

But this murder of our heads,

This blasting of our brains,

Our knees buckling

To the butcher’s refrain;

Treat us gently,

Treat us good,

We would go willing

To your table’s brood.

But abuse us and

Take our pastures away

And place us in a cage,

And you will see the day

When our hooves turn to justice

And our tongues learn your ways;

One day, our backs will carry no longer

The hot brands of slaves.”