Animal Rights Poetry and Prose from All-Creatures.org

Words pour out of me
In an endless thread
A dreamtime stream
Giving me a life sentence
In love, sorrow, outrage.

I do not know and dread and vent
Numb beyond the endless flow
Of words entangled in despair
That so many never care or see
Or feel for wildness in a cage
Billions in crowded factory farms
Soon to be killed by bloody arms
For someone’s thoughtless meal
All consumed without a thought

Others suffering to find the balms
For those diseases they could prevent
Or poison every infestation
Regardless of their own procreation.
So, I write, fight the unnamed
To let every soul be free.

Lions doing tricks in the circus ring
Applauded, our dominion lauded;
Caged canaries with no sky still sing
Spirit of hope not yet terminated.
Whales harpooned, wolves exterminated
Dogs and elephants chained
Beasts of burden beaten, maimed,
"Put all Heaven in a Rage."

I strive to preserve my sanity
With sound science, ethics, reason,
Against the might of inhumanity,
Where animal protection is for naught,
Environmental protection fought,
The Covenant broken, the treason
Of our sacred duty to care and to heal
A ravaged Earth and every relation.

I will continue to compose
With word after word to oppose
Cruel indifference, political corruption
To make a difference with disruption
Through my appeals to conscience
For justice, respect for sentience,  
Before I decompose, or go to seed
And become a tumbleweed.

Quotation from William Blake's poem "Auguries of Innocence," circa 1803. Also inspired by Dylan Thomas: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" and Fr. Thomas Berry: "The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects."

© Michael W. Fox Nov.5/24