In a cage
you are a prisoner
your freedom
just to stand
is taken from you
forcibly
and its hard to understand
why you lost that freedom
when others clearly still
have it in the forest
climbing trees feelings
that thrill
but you, you have
been captured
you did nothing wrong
you were in the right place
at the wrong
time, you belong
anywhere but this place
this tiny cage so cold
in this dark laboratory
where technicians always scold
me
hit me
hurt me
bruise me
cut me
leave me in this cage alone
often without water
those seeds that I have sown
never really helped me
each week those scalpels do
cut into my poor sore head
and the pain is really true
and why is it they do this
for some corporate specification
for lipstick or for face cream
or other vile creation
they stole me from my family
and AIR INDIA said Yes
other airlines all said NO
despite what was a mess
I still was caGED and shipped
into this nasty laboratory
where I was shaved and an electrode
was implanted into me
AIR INDIA and AIR France
your coffers must be low
to let these BASTARDS buy into
your freight Departments glow
blood money who needs
the unethical to sell
any airline worth its salt
Would say you go to Hell
or get them to call a halt
something they’d do well
to remember in the board room
with the sitar and the raga
with the chai in fine bone china cups
cooked up on some aga
when the CEO smokes his cigar
and the cognac makes him choke
he can realise that the profit
made
came via a darkly joke
he a little primate
was stolen from his tree
and shipped across the world
by Air India, the key
shipper to Laboratories
of those of us, who found
that we had yes been captured
and in a cage now on the ground
Air India an airline
as prestigious as could be
who carries souls, yes captured souls
to ths vile laboratory
knowing we will undergo
operations for
cosmetic testing reasons
in the process be made sore
be made to bleed
to suppurate
to fester and to cry
to lose my sleep
to sit and weep
and at sometime to die
Rex Tyler is a Poet, Campaigner, former owner of an organic shop of 30 years, and Public Speaker living in Berkhamsted, UK.