SUZI and the Lahore Zoo

a zoo is a place where arrogance
Has reached a total high
Its where inconceivability
Is a logjam in the sky
Its unthinkable in wild terms
Not feasible at all
Exchanging what was harmony
For wire cages and a wall

Its illogical and sloppy
Untenable and unsound
It gives a wrong impression
Perhaps its wishful thinking
For me it does astound
Its like having a fixation
Imagining that we
Can discriminate and be so unfair
Using partiality

Its all about obsession
With a business and a plan
misinterpreting the vision
As to how it all began
Underrate and undervalue
The creatures who will be
Exhanging all their wildness
For what is iniquity

Lahore Zoo was unconscious
Its backwardness would be
Bewilderingly obvious
But zoo’s just cannot see
The uncertainty the unwisdom
The imperfect knowledge they
Being so unknowing
And insensitive they play

Into what is cruelty
Inexpert afterall
An elephant from a forest
Freedom is their call
Their truth their authenticity
Our absurdity
Our misjudgement our illusion
Our pathetic fallacy

Suzi came when she was six
Our mendacity
Deceptiveness was rampant
Such hypocrisy
Taken from the jungle
From a social family where
She would have faced terror
And a journey of despair

Swindling and skulduggery
Sharp practice all the way
Up against our roughness
And the drama of each day
The angst and the discomfort
The actual bodily harm
The bull hooks and the outrage
And continued alarm

The abandonment from family
Not enough to eat
Underfinanced undercapitalized
Really off the sheet
Undernourished feel the lack of care
A child taken away
Sold to the lowestbidder
Who was going to make her pay

A total lack of planning
An unsuitability
Obnoxiousness and nastiness
And pure morbidity
Painfulness maltreatment
Unkindness all the way
Deleterious and destructive
She expected to obey

No exercise to speak of
Tortured every day
Injurious and damaging
An ominous delay
In feeding her sometimes for days
Mischevious and wrong
Often she would left standing
In her feces for a long
Time for her so nauseous
Sickeningly so
And they would take it out on her
For months on end you know

In all the heat unhygenic
Maggoty and wrong
She dreamed about her jungle life
Where she did belong
Not in this dark dull area
Totally alone
Scoffed at by the keepers
Matted to the bone

She could feel herself deteriorating
Really losing weight
Impoverished and exhausted
She was in a state
Battered frayed and shabby
Out there every day
Begging them for money
Which the keepers put away

Inertness was her master
Immobility
Lifelessness and languor
Became debility
Weariness was evident
Nothing for her to do
But gradually go mental
Sway and swing all through

It became her vale of sorrows
Days of misery
Nobody to talk to
Nobody to see
The keepers they were hostile
They beat her just for fun
Life became so terrible
When the day was done

Chained up she was hurting
Hopeful death might come
Resigned to her abandonment
Under the great thumb
Of lahore zoo a jail in fact
A horrid place to be
Under curfew day and night
A lost soul actually

She died last May
Gave up the fight
Her legs were gone and she
Couldnt sit doen snymore
She just stood there painfully
Hopeful that her eyes would remain closed
For evermore
This prison in which she was forced
To be
A hell hole of gore

She was in a waking nightmare
Every single day
Afflicted by her surroundings
No where could she play
Eternal damnation
Her fate worse than death
Wretchedness and sadness
She didnt want the breath

Wounded and heavy laden
Haggard and alone
Plagued by inactivity
Every single bone
Ached each time she moved
Despondently she cried
Out to her dear mother
Who was on the other side

After her death the zoo
Decided they would bury her
For 5 months and then dig her up
Yes honestly They were
Wanting to give her tired old bones
To the university
And her skin went off to a place
And she was stuffed apparently

And now that awful prison
Wants amother pachyderm
Another victim to torture
For another term
These evil zoo’s should be shut down
They are evil through and through
Its up to all of us to say
NO That is my view