Vegan Poetry

We All Want to be Free

I want to be as free as a bird,

Light as a feather, 

Happy as though everyday had good weather,

Without being held down by society's tether.

Of course that means, I have to choose

Who to be, which bird is me?

Am I a chicken, is it me?

A he or a she?

A being or an it?

A life or a meal?

A pet or a substandard?

If a chicken were me, I'd be classified alone,

Considered a meal grown like grass,

Cut down to size and placed in plastic bags

As though I'm nothing but mindless trash.

As a chicken I must feel something?

Have a family of my own, a nest to keep warm, a way to move on.

I can dream and talk,

Sleep and walk,

Feel and outfeel.

Of course, I must be on some sort of farm.

I must live surrounded by my kind

Chickens with families just like mine.

Hopefully unlike them, I'm not separated from my own.

Where do their eggs go, where do mine crack, hatch, and love me?

Is it a safe place, a place to call home?

As I try to fill my nest with young

The farmers continue to come on and on.

Flashing lights to replace the day,

My body hurts too much to say,

I dearly wish that I did not have to stay.

If I could cry like you, would I be free?

My unnatural home makes me feel estrange,

In a place no one should ever be tamed.

Crowded yet alone.

Stuffed and empty.

Alive but dead. 

Without words or a beak to my name,

I try to waddle around the dead remains.

As I move along the crowded floor,

A few shes crawl around the floor, unable to walk anymore.

Trying to hold their heft, I continue to lay eggs and watch my neck.

There is no sun, no sky, no moon;

Just a metal roof and a light staring at stone.

There were no days or nights to count,

Just the flipping of a light.

One day it came to me

That the end was certain for everyone, everything.

Stuffed in cages smaller than the ones from before, the day thrown out on the floor.

We were thrown into a truck so dark and warm.

An uncomfortable itching emerged and made me wish for the norm.

Up and down, right and left, cages surround

The bumpy ride to the end of the road.

A road cutting across the fields of farms, used to feed the unborn.

I soon knew what was to become of me.

I was to die once we got inside of the factory.

My legs strapped to the metal lines swiftly and surely,

I was soon to die.

Should it hurt if humans say its painless?

Well it be a day of remembrance?

Would a wall have all our names?

From 1- infinity lives lived in vain,

A holocaust refused any name.

A shot to the head and thrown in a boiler,

Death was me and who I was.

With the end of my life,

Without ever being free, I soon realized that Being a chicken is not for me.

No bird is safe in the industry, not the flamingos made of pink feathers,

Or the penguins made of such a fine leather.

The only ones who seem to be spared,

Are those who die immediately.

Spared the life of pain recycled inside a regular terrain.

I hope the human chokes on my remains-

A sudden reminder, a hint of my indefinite pain.

And when they do I hope they see,

That I am not just a bag of wings.

I am a being, I am me.