Dr. Yarrum
circa 1987-Fort Lauderdale, FL
When chicken A pecks chicken B,
And chicken B pecks chicken C,
Then chicken C pecks chicken D.
Such is barnyard harmony.

Now chicken C, from A and B.
Accepts with grace his misery.
They pecks his eyes till he can’t see.
Does he protest? Oh no, not he!

His chicken mind is finely tuned
To take as just, each painful wound.
To those above his pecking station
He’ll submit with toleration
Because he knows in his chicken brain
That he can ease his chicken pain,
with freedom and impunity,
by passing it on to chicken D.

Chicken farmers all agree
That none of their charges seem to be
Obsessed with thoughts of liberation
From servitude or subjugation.

Not one of their chicks has made a move
To ask for conditions to improve.
Not one complaint from any chick
That the life he leads just makes him sick.

The human arrangement, in normal life
Lets my boss peck me and I peck my wife.
She pecks the kids and they peck the cat.
A chicken could find no fault in that.

but the human heart has that nagging feeling
That this peck. peck, peck is not appealing.
One chromosome in his DNA
Says, “I’m sure there is a sweeter way’”

The other chromosomes, aghast,
Nail that renegade to the mast.
“People have always been this way,
And that is how they”ll always stay!

It’s animal instinct to cut and claw
Survival is first in nature’s law.”
But the mark twixt a man’s and a chicken’s acumen,
Is that one little dream that makes him human.

———-
Dr. Yarrum is a retired professor of research at Perdue Univ. His most honored work was the successful creation of a 150 lb. monster chicken-all white meat, no bones. It could have eliminated hunger all over the world. Unfortunately, they could not kill it.