Here are some poems I found that I wrote when I was young'un! I guess I was thinking about animals for a while before I became a vegetarian!

The Turkey

water and blood flow from your side

slide down the draining board

were you asked, I wonder?

did you cry when they took you away from

your mother, father, children?

would you have liked another while?

or do you humbly acknowledge your lowness

in this man's world?

do you want to die,

O great sacrificial bird?

naked

plucked and picked

I walk through the street

and want to save them all

want to take them and say:

There'll be no Christmas this year

6/2/86

Ode to a Goldfish

What life has a fish

Swimming round in his dish

Does he dream of the wide open ocean

Does he long to be free, swimming out in the sea

'Stead of moving in circular motion?

What life has a fish

Swimming round in his dish

Staring out through the cold, glass bowl

Looking at people coming and going

Does he wonder if they have a soul?

What life has fish

Swimming round in his dish

Coming up for his dinner at one

Does he wonder who feeds him

Does he care who needs him

Does he feel the warmth of the sun?

What life has a fish

Swimming round in his dish

When he sinks to the bottom and dies

Is it not a grave sin

To be thrown in the bin

As another moves in of a similar kin

While there in the ashes he lies?

circa 1986