A wild heart full of spirit
Found being behind bars
Under lock and key all day
Life’s enduring scars
A Guatamalan Circus
Slavery to boot
Deprivation ordered
Bondage an offshoot
A decade of existence
Coercion to exclude
Every breath of freedom
Unyielding and crude
In CIRCO NAVARRO
Disciplined and made
It was a life sentence
Upon her shoulders laid
Interned in fact
Under arrest
Her claws torn out
The pain
They amputated her first toe
Really just to gain
A reason to be extra cruel
And easier to train
Let out for each performance
And then thrown back Again
Under constant curfew
In a tiny little cage
Choking back her sadness
Unable to show her rage
Clapped in irons lets say
A galley slave a wretched knave
Restrained in every way
Severity and discipline
The order of each day
Draconian laws and rigour
She was made to pay
Pitilessness and relentless harshness
Terrible abuse
This is what a circus is
Nothing but a noose
Ill-fated and luckless
Hapless and forlorn
A continual struggle
Slavishness ans scorn
And then one day the ADI
Came to bring some light
Took her and her friends
Out of the cages
Into other not as tight
Crates they were
In hay so soft
And a toy or two
Clean and smelling sweetly
With a nicer view
Shipped away to Africa
To enclosures truly green
Grasslands for our aching paws
That had never been
On anything but cold dark concrete
Now the softness felt
Beautiful it gave under our wight
The cards were dealt
We were back in Africa
The country of our birth
Feeling the sun upon our backs
Knowing life was worth
Living again a beautiful tyre
Was hanging bringing joy
How I loved to swing on it
My own true rubber toy
Mine yes mine allne
Something belonged to me
I could breathe the warm fresh air
Knowing that I was free
No more ugly tricks in rings
Of sawdust and the baying crowd
No more whips across my back
And all that music loud
I appeared to have some freedom
Thanks to ADI
Animal Defenders International
Write it in the sky
They were undoubted angels
Who rescued me and I
Just love my place in heaven
Under the bluest sky
Rex Tyler is a Poet, Campaigner, former owner of an organic shop of 30 years, and Public Speaker living in Berkhamsted, UK.