Archive for the ‘vegan’ tag
In the Name of Tradition
In a smothering sea of white
Gentle beauty is lost
Born and bred to be dinner
Whatever the cost.
Debeaked, detoed, crippled and weak
Disease running rampant
Your future is bleak.
In a huge sunless warehouse
Tens of thousands crammed tight
Kept like a secret
Out of mind, out of sight.
When your body is fattened
And you collapse from the weight
You are grabbed by rough hands
And sent to your fate.
Hung by your feet
Flapping and scared
Still conscious, confused
If only they cared.
Your neck is then slit
By a mechanized blade
As life drains from your body
You’re alone and afraid.
Another beside you
Misses the knife
Still conscious, she’s boiled
Slowly ending her life.
Neatly you are packaged
Shipped to every store
Butterball makes money
Spent breeding millions more.
Behind the tidy shrink-wrap
Is a mutilated bird
Who had feelings and emotions
And cries that went unheard.
In the name of “tradition”
Tens of millions will die
Somehow their sad remains
Seem so wrong with pumpkin pie.
For Jane
Through the growing crack in the delicate shell
A newborn’s beak is seen
Then a damp and fragile body
Golden feathers to groom and preen
A tiny little blue-eyed girl
One of 50,000 others
All born without a nest of straw
All chirping for their mothers.
As days go by her body swells
Her legs begin to ache
The weight is so unbearable
That sometimes legs will break
She watches as others perish
On the feces covered ground
Not capable of reaching food
They starve without a sound.
After 42 short days of life
Still a baby at that age
She’s violently yanked up by her feet
And thrown into a cage
Packed so tightly she cannot move
With miles of road ahead
Will she survive this brutal transport
Or be one of the many dead?
At her final destination
When the highway finally ends
She hears the terrified screams of family
The shrieks of frightened friends
With a pounding heart she sits and waits
She has no other choice
She can’t tell them that her foot is stuck
She doesn’t have a voice.
When this little girl with sad blue eyes
Is finally ripped away
From the crate that has become her hell
Her little foot will stay
Severed from her body
No one hears her cry in pain
But I’m not alone in crying now
For this little girl called “Jane.”
_______________________
Heather Leughmyer is a vegan activist who uses poetry as a means to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves. She shares a home in the country with her husband, daughter, two cats, two dogs, and several rescued rats.
Why Vegan?
Her desperate cries could brand a soul
With agonizing sorrow
When the newborn son she had today
Is stolen from her tomorrow
This broken heart won’t be her last
She’ll never be a mother
While misery seeps into milk
That’s swallowed by another.
The frantic way he kicks and fights
And tries to cling to life
While men in blood-soaked aprons
Coldly end it with a knife
How indifferently they slice and dice
What a horrifying fate
When muscle soaks up fear and pain
Ending up on someone’s plate.
Despair has overcome her mind
As she takes each labored breath
Feces coat the rusty bars
Inside she waits for death
For her the torment just won’t end
Though many more have died
Each egg absorbs depression
To be broken, flipped and fried.
When suffering is shrink-wrapped
It betrays so many lives
Few realize that they make a choice
With their spoons, their forks, and knives
When cruelty comes in a carton
And we can package pain
We must see past exteriors
We have so much to gain.
_______________________
Heather Leughmyer is a vegan activist who uses poetry as a means to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves. She shares a home in the country with her husband, daughter, two cats, two dogs, and several rescued rats.
