Zoothanasia: a poem using animal abuse as a metaphor for abusive human relationships!

I recently read how animals in captivity or in game reserves are routinely culled, and not for their welfare as is usually claimed, but for selfish human economic reasons. The word 'zoothanasia' has been coined for this behaviour. There are many tragic examples; a male black rhino called Ronnie who was past reproductive age and supposedly dangerous, was shot as big game by a Texan hunter for the princely sum of $350,000; a healthy young giraffe called Marius was cut up and fed to lions when he no longer fitted into the breeding programme of the zoo in which it lived.

I felt driven to write a poem about it, and was instantly impelled to construct it as an analogy, having seen a parallel between the treatment of such innocent creatures and the treatment of certain - often female - partners in abusive relationships. Unfortunately, Lush Stories rejected the finished poem, saying it was neither loving nor erotic enough for their taste. And that's fair enough. Anyway, here it is, for your eyes only.

Zoothanasia

Captured, raptured

Nurtured, cross the threshold

Into gleaming mad

Incarceration

Glaring lights

Hard cold delights

*

I'm fed on beds of straw

You roar, I'm raw meat

Eat and drink to

You, my keeper

Sleep another hour

Of Serengeti dawn

*

Vultures circle

Workers sweep the compound clean

Till you return

To tease with hypodermic darts

Impart, inject

A painful sleepless state

*

Stick out my neck

In calm and stately beauty

Fury chops it down

Dissects, inspects me

Feeds my flesh

With pride to hungry lions

*

Doe-eyed lust

Is dust, my unborn children

Thrust against the bars

And dragged away

I stay and face

The tasteless daily throng

*

In narrow cages

Pacing rages, burning, churning

Anger wages war

Against my mere existence

Economic nonsense

Innocence has long since

*

Gone, the purity

The trust you promised me

The outstretched hand that stroked

And stoked my loyalty

Now turns, a beast

To slash and burn

*

Horn, pale tusk

Red tooth and claw

Now toothless, clawless

Mute, dead, flawless

Gazing down with glassy eye

Both born to live till love must die

*