For “Experimental Animals” and the Humans Who Use Them
Animal Rights Poetry By Lynne Goldsmith From All-Creatures.org

Who am I to say
you’re nothing

short of some inconsequential being
that bad things should be done to,
(acts of which I will not name here
nor describe). For you are the ones
I want to empower, you, the animals.

Who am I
to say (like certain others)
that you exist to be sacrificed,
not shown the faces of sunlight
nor human hands of kindness.

Who am I to say
that life which gifted you—gifted us—
hardly matters when Earth calls you—
cries out while humans enter a darkness
of annihilation in ways
I will not state here.

Who am I to be some center,
some geocentric model expecting
revolvements around me to serve
my desires through your pain.

If you could talk in languages
that I and humans understood,
not just in what I feel and honor,
what would I hear?
What would I swallow
as our salvation to burgeon.

Who am I to say
that your lives are what I want to save.

If only I could speak.
If only I had spoken.
If only I mattered, too.

There is time. 

©Lynne Goldsmith, 2020

Image from CAARE Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation