Shackled

My mother is big
My mother is strong
she came from Africa
she did belong to Africa
where the sun boldly does shine
and always she told me
that place was divine

huge great expanses of
sweet smelling plain
mountains up yonder
places to gain
dust baths a plenty
trees for to try
freedom was everywhere
under the sky

but where we are now
we are shackled in chains
the pull on our legs
it bloody well drains
our spirit, and mother is tired
all the time
the food we are given
is coated in slime

and mould always on it
this circus is bad
having to do tricks
makes mother sad
there’s just me and mum here
but often we feel
how nice it would be
if we just could conceal

ourselves in a truck
and just go back home
where the lions and antelopes
and buffalo’s roam

where a great orange ball
hangs fast in the sky
sending its heat where the
animals lie
drying the scrub and heating the grass
where the light fills the soul
there mother would pass

and rumble and trumpet
and cry to the sky
as the vultures came in
hoping to rely
on the death of a zebra
cut down by a Lion
and pick up some tid bits
I counted just nine

big flapping wings
and threadbare throats red
what a kill brings
to the table we’re led
to share some weird souls
ready to lap up blood
that controls
the carnivore spirit
and flood

whose fangs or whose
claws
will tear into flesh
with their terrible jaws

as for me I was born in the circus
of doom
my cage really doesn’t have enough room
its filthy and rusty and wet with the slime
that hangs from the top now all of the time
Mother at night she stands by the van
recalling the time she was caught by some man
who took her to task with his whip and his tow
and led her and captured her as we all know

now she gives rides
and does tricks with some clown
who climbs on her head
and then shimmies down
we are proud creatures
we know it is wrong
to torment us and treat us
as they do all along