You pay Procter and Gamble
to burn my eyes
with their cold chemicals
just so you can have
a new brand of
shampoo.
Why can’t you see
my pain?
You pay the circus people
to whip me and starve me
and keep me in chains
just so you can watch me
humiliate myself
for your amusement.
How can you cheer
while they hurt me?
You pay the factory farms
to lock me in a small,
dark box away from my mother
just to keep me so weak
that my muscles are pink and tender
for your dinner plate.
Does my anemic, mutilated body
satisfy your taste for veal?
You may be able to sleep at night
by telling yourself
that I don’t feel any pain,
that my distant screams
are of no importance
to your civilized human society.
But as you lay in your warm,
soft bed surrounded by
bloody chunks of dead bodies,
my cold blind eye
that your apathy burned
will be watching you.