From All-Creatures.org

Animal Rights Poetry By Noël Sweeney

Who Breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel
Who among you could resist using power
To destroy some creature somewhere
For no reason except to know how it feels
Who would not find someone fragile
Then harm to induce a sly secret smile
Yes I guess we have to confess
Our power over the powerless
Captured by a never sated lust
As the archetypal man who is crushed
Where he is pushed around by his boss
Goes home to hit a woman as he is cross
Who then smacks her child for her loss
When he then kicks the sleeping pet cat
Followed by kicking a rusty crushed can
Without cause or reason other than
Using strength makes him feel like a man
Hurting someone weaker because you can
So it comes and so it goes
While second-rate Hirst art flows
A million wings broken while no one cries
Biased bars against a gaoled butterfly
Their hurt makes a coward feel real
On oh so many days
In oh so many ways
When what we condemn in other men
We practise on a sunflower stem
Spraying the harmless honey bees
Scorching the torched land and trees
Anywhere there is one more deal
Anytime there is one more life to steal
For all of us has an instant appeal
Compelled to purloin the last silent squeal
Inflicting a wound which will never heal
You need look no further than their ordeal
To see the effect of each weal
As our power is the final seal
A sound closer than the last chime peel
Hirst is not the first or the worst
Where the butterflies are broken
Without a word being spoken
Our wheels within wheels is a cloudburst
Hirst counts profits on his poverty graph
Killing a million butterflies as his epitaph
Confined in a truth that is all too real
As to who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel

© Noel Sweeney, 2023

 

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