here's a poem i wrote one night when i could no longer ignore the cramped chicken coops sitting right beside our jeepney terminal. i've since chosen to ride jeepneys on another terminal, far away from all the unsettling sights such coops held inside their bars.
- vincent pido
Jailbird
Once again, like every other cold night,
she peeps through the rusty steel bars
hoping to escape the now barren fright
within her old heart that has seen much too many wars.
She feels that her time is drawing near,
and is saddened that she has not been free.
Almost all her life she was a captive in fear
while the rest of the world was blind to her plea.
Her instincts tell her of a distant memory
that beckons her to run, flap her wings and fly,
pursue the life she was born to live, flee
from the lustful hands of those who watch her nearby.
Wrongfully sentenced to a cruel imprisonment
for a crime that was never thought, never done,
her days crawl on, but she never forgets she is innocent
although those before her, she knew, found death in this unjust condemnation.
As the night grew darker and her inner stirrings deeper,
a loud conversation of sorts is overheard, a negotiation.
The gates to the crowded cell is opened to the buyer,
that he may select the one to suffer execution.
It was her, she was not wrong.
She struggled and clucked and cackled and pecked,
until she found her way back into the safety of the throng
only to be once more seen and grabbed by her feathery neck.
If only they understood her worry.
If only they understood her cries
that told the horrible story
of a chicken that was soon to be fried.
