The Pincushion

For decades you’ve used our bodies as your pincushion

Poking, prodding, cutting, and killing.

Forcing us to be your experimental subjects

Scraping, shocking, drugging, and drilling.

Locking us up in meager dwellings

Filthy, restrictive, desolate, and cramped.

Filling me with toxins, chemicals, and poisons

A painful brand is stamped upon my skin.

Upon my skin a brand is painfully stamped.

My skin burns as you cover me with makeup and creams.

My muscles ache with each electrical shock.

My brain no longer functions as it should

You’ve carelessly destroyed my biological clock.

You alter the very DNA that nature gave me

I was not created for misery and imminent death.

Are the answers to your scientific questions

Really worth taking my very last breath?

Stop using me as your puppet, pincushion, and servant

Treat me with kindness, compassion, and respect

With all the advances to technology these days

Surely you could find an alternative subject.