Parched, famished and completely worn out.
We pant and gasp,
For water,
For food,
For some time out.
But it is all silenced with a whip of pain.
Our eyes are dry,
Bloodshot and lifeless,
We have no more tears left to shed,
We have no more life to live and love.
Our skin is rough,
Reddened with patches of blood from scars,
We have no more coats to keep us secure,
We are vulnerable to all we are fearful of.
Our mouths are graveyards,
Filled with graves of all the things we long to tell,
But we have felt the words die on our tongues,
Roll off smoothly just to halt at our lips.
Our hearts are heavy,
With the weight of overwhelming emotions.
Our minds are troubled,
With the frightening thoughts that race through.
Our colour is grey,
Our rainbows stolen from us,
We get painted, instead, in colours we don't know of.
But we secretly eat these unknown colours,
Sometimes we have the urge to,
Because we think we'll feel our rainbows somehow.
Our feelings are forced,
We are told what to feel and what not to.
Our actions are controlled,
We are puppets with strings in their painful grasp.
Chained up, left to suffocate in tiny, stuffed crates.
We scream and yell,
For release,
For air,
For space.
But it is all silenced with a muzzle to restrain.
We shout and screech,
We wish and pray,
We kill and get killed,
We die everyday.
We hope for better days,
We hope for helping hands,
We hope for the sun to rise,
We hope for the moon to stay grand.
But until then, we try,
To survive this hell we're in,
We obey every command,
Even when we don't want to do it.
Because the truth is concealed,
We are trained like machines,
We are tamed to please.
So we smile and act,
Spread laughs and hollers,
And the crowd never finds out,
The real circus of horrors.
-Tayyaba Tahir
(5/6/2017)
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So I wrote another poem (Yay for that). But this one I tried to write -as you can tell or if you can't- in the voice of the abused circus animals.
Circuses are fun and delightful experiences for many. But the cruelty towards the animals is anything but that.
So many animals face harsh treatment and are expected to do things they are not created to do. These animals are free spirits. They are not made for performing tasks as dangerous as jumping through loops on fire to standing on their two hind legs. All of these are unnatural and unacceptable.
I hope this poem made you see the reality behind these colourfully tented and brightly smiling circuses, and made you realise that there's more than meets the eye and how looks can be deceiving.
Sincerely,
SarcasWit_Writer