Please, please have mercy on me!

The needles, the knives,

Just let me be!

I’m a white-coat worker in China

But my jacket,

No matter how clean,

No matter how many times it’s washed.

It is not blood-free.

Your hands are no exception,

Pullling me from my cage 

In a cruel election

Of who gets picked today

To be the new stain

On that stiff, white lab coat.

I’m a scientist!

I went through years of college.

I know what I’m doing.

I gained all the knowledge,

Except one lesson I guess that I missed,

That animals have a life and a soul.

They’re not meant for us to reach our goal

Of creating a less harmful mascara or 

The best smelling perfume of this era.

Because no matter how much of that I use

The smell of blood will still be on this stiff, white lab coat.

You don’t realize that while you go home

I will be cramped and crowded but still alone

In this dark, damp, dirty cage,

Where I have spent all of my days.

Where I will never see the sun’s rays.

Where I can only dream of open fields to graze.

When you go to church on every Sunday

No matter how much you hope and you pray,

You will never get rid of your sins on that 

Stiff, white lab coat.

How bad can it be

If you cant speak?

You are not the same as me,

At least not biologically.

I bet I have the cure

For cancer, HIV,

And heart disease.

So the pain you must endure

Is nothing compared to 

Making sure humanity’s health is secure.

Just because we cannot communicate the same way

Does not make it okay.

I am silenced only when my pain

Has repeated every day,

And my cries,

And my screams,

And my pleas,

Along with the medicines you feed to me, 

That damage and burn and sting my throat.

How can you still be proud of your work,

When killing animals is like clockwork?

Do you still want to wear that stiff, white lab coat?

I’m giving research information, data, and stats,

But does all that make up for the fact

That I’m still taking innocent lives

By gasses, injections, toxins, and knives?

Our ethics and morals that make us human 

I have lost those; they have been ruined.

Because even though I gain money from your pain

As a person I am bankrupt with no values to my name.

If I have lost what makes me human,

Why do I get to decide who lives and shouldn’t?

To have owners that play with me,

 To be loved,

To be cared for,

Is it too much to ask?

A life of happiness, an idea too far to grasp?

I’m pushed farther to death and insanity

Since you’ve lost your humanity.

Why do you have the right to do what you do

When you’re no closer to your medical break-through?

The end does not justify the means

When millions of lives end for your vaccines.

Saying, “it’s better them than us” is only a scapegoat

Because the same bleach you use to burn me

Is the same bleach you use to clean the blood 

Off of your stiff, white lab coat.