A Pig's Silent Plea
By Susan S. Barber
An Animal Rights Poem from All-Creatures.org

All of God's creatures have rights, a fact that most people don't seem to recognize. This includes both human and non-human animals, but not all of them can speak for themselves.

A Pig's Silent Plea
By Susan S. Barber

From somewhere dark and cold
I hear my heart beating
I feel something out there
That chain on my neck
But I don't feel it.
I don't feel.

From the dark and damp recesses of my mind
I hear someone calling to me
It's me.
But I don't answer.
I have nothing to say.

I can only scream and rail
Alone
Inside my head I scream!
please
I beg now
Tears running into my mouth
Snot dripping down my face
I pound the walls with my bleeding hooves
I throw myself into despair and my body racks with hopeless sobs
I kick and cry and plead
I plead
for Mercy.
Inside my head.

Outside my head is a strange scary place
This cold, unyielding prison camp where my body lies immobilized in
the grip of
dominion.
The lights--
The repulsive vomitous smell of my own urine and feces
The ammonia--
But I don't see
I don't smell
I don't have senses
I'm just an empty vessel
I'm just some Thing
I'm just some food on someone's plate.
That's what They say.
Outside my head.
I live in a small musty room
Inside my head.
Where I lay in a ball
curled up
and piteously mewing like the helpless tortured being I am.
I want my mommy
Inside my head.

I don't want to be in my body
They do things to my body
Things that hurt
They hurt my body
I don't want to know about that
I don't want to feel that
I don't want to acknowledge that other reality
I pace up and down my room now, waiting...
hoping...
needing...
wanting...
pleading...
for the Knife to stop the pain so I can float away.
"Someday I'll float away"
I whisper to myself over and over
A pathetic lie I weave to wrap myself in--
but it's still cold. 

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