A crimson pink shawl embroidered in gold
Drapes his large, glorious form.
He stands tall, maybe even mighty
Undeterred by the wildest, cruelest storm.
Sometimes, golden bells ornate his body,
Ringing to bathe his arrival
In all the more royalty
And masking the clinking of cuffs and chains
That bind the powerful legs of this unfortunate king
And silence his whimpers and cries of pain.
He trods the trails with unmatched majesty,
This helpless slave.
His humble silence is his crown
Bejeweled with such dignity and grace
Unmatched and by far unmatchable
By any mortal of the human race.
He once had a spirit, now long gone
As is his freedom: all traded away by force
To the beastliest of species under the sun
In unfair return for fodder, sticks, whips, and ropes.
Men and women travel from near and far
To mount and relish his body, now no longer his own,
Which into a vehicle and joy-ride
Has, with perfection, been harnessed,
Which shakes and shudders, shrinks and bleeds
While his mind has long ago shattered into emptiness.
As chains and hooks bite into his skin, tearing his soul apart,
The tourists find new use for his helplessness.
Delightfully, they turn his state into a shallow object of art.
Countless paintings and posed-for photographs
Joyfully depict his misery
Though always veiled by imagined glamour and finesse
After all, he is a crucial part of the human economy.
Now he is too weak to be called a vehicle
Too old, and no longer beautiful
His scars are too many and too deep to be hidden
Even from the blindest, most indifferent people.
His inner gloom shows in his shrivelled eyes,
His dead spirit in his appearance is now visible,
So that even for photographs he is not suitable.
Now the milk of his sisters has dried up
In the cold, gloomy sheds of doom.
The life of his kin is now devoid of any use
Yet, enough has not yet been squeezed out,
Or not enough yet “provided”, the humans say.
So, if their life gives us nothing, their death we must choose.
Neither the greed nor the pocket is satiated,
So we shall try this one ultimate way.
He will meet his end, by those very weapons,
Throughout used only to control and threaten,
Those that are more familiar than the siblings he now sees
Wreathing their bloody way into death’s spiralling tunnel.
To the human, greed calls; to him, death beckons…
Now that his dead skin has been made a home
For the coins and paper the human most adores
Now that his flesh has been cooked and eaten
Now that his existence is entirely consumed
Even now, that home has more room,
Even now, that greed has not lessened.
