Jumbo's Lament

I sit with my keeper in the dark
of my den, guzzling the whisky
he brings for me most nights.

When the toothache and memories
overtake me, I smash the cage
they made to contain my strength.

King of the Elephants they call me,
not my lineage of birth-right,
the first of my kind to see these shores.

Man has always been there
at the centre of my memory,
when they riddled my mother with spears,

snatched me from the grasslands,
when they chained and jailed me,
dragged their prize across the sea.

Then I met him.
A man unlike the others,
the first to see me for myself.

A man who sat apart from his herd,
who swore to protect and nourish me,
our first taste of friendship.

He dredged the disease from my skin,
guided me as my masters set me to work
carrying their children on my back.

Pain endures through the night.
It wakes me from my sleep,
from dreams of grass and acacia trees,

yet he is always there, whisky in hand,
to sooth the pain away,
his and mine, night after night after night.

(This poem was inspired by the recent David Attenborough documentary on Jumbo the Elephant, entitled "Attenborough and the Giant Elephant". There is also a video version of this poem available on my YouTube channel.) 

The Life Choices of Ming

Fun fact about being born in captivity,
you don't choose where you go next.

As it happens I left my cage
when I was still a mewling cub.
Somebody from the city thought
I'd be the perfect living decoration
for his flat twenty one stories up.

It wasn't as if I was along up there;
my alligator flatmate shared the space,
we even had our own bedrooms.
Al didn't get much exercise though.

Frozen chickens taste great in abundance,
and our keeper had plenty of those.
Sometimes he'd bring friends with him.
I'd introduce myself
regardless of their expectations.

Then that housecat arrived.

Clearly our keeper had forgotten
I had paws the size of plates.
It's a shame he got in the way,
otherwise I wouldn't have bitten him,
he wouldn't have gone to hospital,
a policeman wouldn't have tried to
parasail into the flat,
and I wouldn't have given him
a burglar's welcome.

My cage now is quite nice actually.
I get on well with the other tigers,
and my keepers feed me
more than chickens these days.

(This poem is based on the real-life story of Ming of Harlem. For further reading check out this New York Times article and this interview with Antoine Yates, Ming's owner.)