Juvenile Ostrich and our scant regard for their life

Shamelessness and brazen-ness
The pageantry and pomp
The swagger the bravado
The flagrancy and romp
Carnival the Moulin rouge
Circus and some more
Luxury bags for ugly hags
In the city store

The puffery the bounce and swank
And looking down the nose
The audaciousness and the high and mighty
Where anything goes
Hermes yes and Prada
Are out there on display
Their dignity their grandeur
Their flourish and their way

The vanity of riches
Of the self important souls
Stuck up and conceited
Carrying out their roles
Of being in the lime light
Never the hoi polloi
Dramatic and assertive
But so so far from joy

They know themselves, they are ugly
Despite their noble thought
Their ancestry their blood lines
Where the best people are sought
The vulgar herd can slave away
Morning noon and night
But the honours go to designer shops
Where everything is right

Packed with furs and feathers
With exotic leathers too
With probably the most heinous
Acts upon the bearers who
Were mammals of distinction
Wild and free to be
Part of this great planet
Not drenched in purgatory

Not trapped out in the forest
Like a worthless piece of rag
Not caged in some vile prison
Where life begins to lag
Not induced then to go crazy
Of being killed before their time
Their world is turned completely
Upside down and so this rhyme

Comes heartfelt and honestly
And talks of the Western Cape
Where farms and slaughterhouses
Murder and they rape
The wildness out of AFRICA
Great nation state great soul
Whose bounty are the animal earthlings
The creatures with great soul

The largest flightless land bird
The Ostrich
Look and see
Loyal and fitting parents
Such social birds they be
Can navigate a social system
Complex to a tee
The planet needs the ostrich
That is why they be

In AFRICA an integral part
Of the system of the wild
Not in some production depot
Where they are just defiled
Torn away from their parents
And kept in feed lots bare
To have their feathers torn out
Whilst they are standing there

Their meat
Their skin
Their feathers
Walking merchandise
That is how we see them
How is that abuse Nice
Feathers plucked for dusters
Agony, so we
Can push the dust inside our homes
About for all to see

3 day old chicks murdered
For your wallets for your cash
For your ego for your ignorance
Their life equals trash
In the wild they are with their parents
For three years learning the ropes
And live some 40 years or more
Born, with all those hopes

That was until the likes of
hermes and Prada they
Searching the world for exotics
For their great display
So the western cape provides them
Gives us what we need
Feeds our fucking vanity
Our blatant bumptious greed

The snobbery is everywhere
The grandiose the sublime
The over-weening over- bearing
Holier than though, who climb
Up the social ladder
To spit down on us all
Who patronize and condescend
To answer when we call

They surround themselves
With disrepute and notoriety
But they have such reputations
How can that ever be
The plethora of trappers
The hunters the fur farms
The CAFO’s and the feed lots
We should all be up in arms

Protesting at the cruelty
The abject torture shown
Its totally out of character
Worse than they could have known
Whilst they are tasting foie gras
And chewing on their veal
The culture and tradition
Is out there and its real

Its ugly its horrific the cowardly craven
Way
They treat these splendid wild birds
Every single day
They are never fabric they are vital
They are strong
But torturing them and murdering them
Is altogether wrong

Of course they are apprehensive
And their trepidation shows
Man comes to tear their feathers out
How would you suppose
A sentient would feel about
The actions of the men
Tearing out their follicles
Maybe up to ten

Per time that is excruciating
Agony they feel
Its a hopeless situation
For them its very real
They walk about half naked
Bearing the wounds inflicted
Feeling life is hopeless for them
On pain they are addicted

They have to be for we are there
To give them a bad day
Everything is inevitable
All along the way
We become their bogeyman
We intimidate them so
We ridicule and misrepresent
Their status and their show

They have a great affection
For life out in the wild
They are honest and they are caring
Sharing with each child
A life gracious and dignified
Appreciative and true
They have to learn the hard way
To do what they must do

And we ignore that beauty
Our haute couture reigns fast
Our elegance our fashion
Our die of course we cast
Out into the great plains
Where the iconic souls
Live and die in splendour
Acknowledging their roles

We see them as exotic
The keyword on our block
The great stores ring with all of that
The unseemliness the shock
Is cast from us completely
Its the correctness and the breed
Its the air the poise the savoir faire
Thats how to succeed

The stitchery the enrichment
The flourish and the scroll
The richness of the fabric
How you create your role
The unsightly the defacement
The odious the plain
The cruelty the torture
The tears that fall like rain

All of that is wiped away
Designers to the fore
All the dashing smart and classy
And a whole lot more
These one year birds are full of life
Babies still yet they
Are the fodder for the industry
For the bottom line
They are way

Up into the boardrooms
Helping their forecasts to rise
The back skin of the Ostrich
Where So much profit lies
The nobbles where the feathers
Were torn out painfully
Create the exotic finish
And the countenance we see

Great open trucks are called on
To take the birds away
Herded down great chutes they go
To the kill floor
And the day
None will ever forget their cries
As they can see their friends
Slaughtered right in front of them
Imagine the fear that sends

A baby into will you
Next time you buy a bag
From hermes or from Prada
It makes my eye bags sag
What it does to your hard hearts
Nobody can see
But they wont beat much longer
Knowing where you be

In amongst the slaughter
Their heads stunned and then they
Are manhandled to a throat slasher
And dispatched right away
The men are really covered in the blood
Of the innocents who
Were only little babies
Loving life as you lot do

The cruelty is beyond words
It breaches all respect
Trying to fight my tears myself
Trying to elect
The right words to describe all this
And how we humans feel
When we choose a handbag
When we make the deal

The extraordinary price tag
The torture and the pain
The insensitive way the birds are killed
By the sadists and the insane
Turning men to monsters
Wasting life so we
Can profit for their bodies
Is only enmity

And never forget creation
The salvation of us all
Animals were never created
For our vanity, that call
Was totally inappropriate
We should rejoice to see
Animals where they were placed
And, where they should be

Our wealth derived from killing
In, the great big sphere
Of wasting life for profit
Of creating the false fear
To subject souls to a beating
To torture them at will
To throw them into prisons
And then whenever kill

So we can wear their feathers
So we can show their skin
So we can use their anal glands
To imagine and begin
Our trail in to the hell of old
Their flesh to fill our gut
And those we deem to keep alive
We make sure the doors are shut

For they can entertain us
Leap through hoops and we
Can sell that as new knowledge
For all the family
Persecute and take advantage
Its the corporate way
The pursuit of profits
For profits sake today

As to these so called fashion houses
With their plunder rich
Stolen from god’s paradise
And the prices that they pitch
Out there to the brainwashed tribes
That imagine what they do
Is because they have their freedom
Unlike the lowly who

Are really just as spirited
Engaging and sublime
They work at being honest
And striving all the time
The animal earthlings are in fact
Our teachers and they must
Be given due respect
And not be ground up in the dust

Hermes and Yes Prada
These birds you need to now
Stop this bloody trade at once
We can show you how
I call for a worldwide boycott
Of feathers skin and fur
Go back to your drawing boards
And readily concur