Is This My Life?
By Bernie Jones
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.

Is This My Life?
By Bernie Jones

Get away from me! 
Stop pecking me! 
Stop that throbbing in my head...that searing pain in my beak 
What's happened to my beak? 
A hot blade, a searing pain I can still feel...what did they do? 
Why did they do it? 
Take that foul stench from what is left of my nostrils...PLEASE!

...is this my life?

I can barely move 
I shit through the slats in the floor 
I'm scared and I'm cramped. GET AWAY FROM ME! 
No space to call my own. 
I peck...I am pecked. 
I peck and try to stretch, 
and peck 
and shit 
and peck 
and sleep 
and try to stretch again. 
It stinks in here. I stink. This world stinks.

Is this my life?

I lay, I eat, I shit, I sleep, I peck, I am pecked, I stink, 
I screech, I feel pain

Is this my life?


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