Thailand’s flourishing dog meat trade

I was a loyal friend to them
I chased the rats away
and in a moments misery
they just gave me a way
for 2 or 3 plastic buckets
was that only the worth
they put on me my guardians
this is planet earth

the place now known as Thailand
and I’m caught up in what
is called the flourishing dog meat trade
soon I am for the pot
that blazing sun is torturous
for we are so exposed
in these tiny little cages
where some of us have closed
our minds to abject worry
we’re feeble and our fright
is getting the best of everything
for things don’t now look bright

the gangs are working in the streets
picking up the strays
many have diseases
and this is how it plays
some are injured hit by cars
others have been abused
many are limp and languid
where food has been refused

the stretcher tongs
that grab our necks
and throw us on the floor
all the weight tears at our muscles’
like we never felt before
the cries let out are awful
mind bending howls of pain
the fear is omnipresent
and clearly its the bane
of all our lives at present
however short they be
the whimpering is closing in
and the bleeding we can see

how my heart does flutter
for all of us now shake
its lamentable
its contemptible
a conspicuous desire
to escape and run forever
away from this hell fire
but of course there is no exit
route
we’re done for
its our time
broken legs and battered heads
all in our pits of slime

the crates are lifted
badly
and slung about the place
tossed onto a truck
the darkest of disgrace
huddled, we are huddled
together hearts we hear
each is beating louder
fuelled by all this fear

we’re snorting we are coughing
we are yelping and we know
when we get, to the check point
some of us will go
its there where we are sorted out
the top breeds will be shipped
to Laos or to Vietnam
the others will be ripped

out of these rusty cages
and out onto a shed
where we will then
soon be dispatched
with some hard blows on the head

they are not exactly careful
so our injuries
might be
they bloody knock our eye out
imagine that and see
what we have to go through
man’s best friend so loyal
even before we gasp our last breath
there’s to be no foil

#e are in the bucket
boil it the water’s almost boiled
and we can feel
the scalding water we
are scraped then of what skin
is still in place
but it does come free
by this time
we are out of it
though some seem paralysed
and can still see what’s happening
that’s when they have realised

that they’re being cut up on a block
and will be eaten soon
by local people who believe
black one’s are in tune
with nature and with added strength
and great vitality
that is why they eat us
that seems how things must be

the A1 dogs go back into more cages
and they get shipped across the river to
Vietnam into the special dog farm
where squalor reigns
where there’s a brutal view
we’re hung up on large hooks
and left to stretch there
as all around the cries of death
we see
blood and gore just coats the floor
pestilence and noxious ill
force fed with great metal tubes
its then more blood they spill

our throats are torn a’sunder
as the foul foods pushed into
they want to make us heavier
and so thats what they do
force feed us strap and hold us down
and bash us if we cry
and of course we feel the pain again
and we know that soon we will die

so of course we yell
we are now in Hell
what else can we do
give up hang low
pretend to know
all that’s coming to
us the end is so in sight
its then that we are torn
out of our cages with those rotten grips
wishing we’d never been born

I yelp just like the others
what else can we do
open our bowels and let them go
the smell is choking too
noise is reaching fever pitch
to the detriment of all
unhallowed are our whereabouts
as pathogens now brew

diarrhoea squirts its amoebic worst
as many a gut and stomach burst
deprevation is all about
really there are no laws to flout
no sense of right
everything’s wrong
in essence why did
all belong
to the canine tribe
on this evil day
when a plastic bucket
meant I had to pay

and I paid with my life
we all did, and
our scandalous end
was apparently planned
a scourge of the living
the baneful cry
unshielded and lost
and now we lie

in a soupy pot
or on a fire
with a bunch of herbs
on a charcoal pyre
a hostile crowd
a bleak cold wind
and the surplus bits
were ruddy well binned

200 dogs had met their end
all of them were man’s best friend
that’s the torment that we felt
when the rotten hands were dealt
when we suffered all that pain
when we died and were born again
sucked up into adversity
the inglorious prosperity