In Memory of the Pigs
Encountering the pigs in The Netherlands inspired a memorial illustration honoring the pig within this web of life. I wove in our vision for a different fate, one where the pigs experience a peaceful life of love and respect.
Below are two poems I wrote alongside the artwork. Featured here is also a short film showcasing some of the creation process and one of the poems narrated.
This cycle journey has flooded my senses with new waves of awareness; I ride the current free of restriction. The world is my canvas and this art an interpretation of all beheld.
Introspection has birthed this nature medicine, what has been channeled through the experience of sleeping on beds of moss, feeling the Earth tremor with thunder and witnessing the screams of wounded pigs on their way to slaughter. The contrasts of our world elevate me in a constant state of wonder and curiosity.
This art and poetry series is an ongoing evolution I now share without naming it, without containers, without boundaries.
I weave into each piece my deepest desire for peace and the never failing hope for an ecological civilization grounded in love and wildness, where all beings thrive free from oppression.
In German a saying goes, die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt. Hope dies last.
As our animal friends are unnaturally killed around us, our hope does not die with them. We honor them with art, with our voice and dedication to speaking their names. Those whose cries are not heard in the supermarket aisles or laboratories, those whose wings no longer have habitats to nest in, those whose lives are torn apart by war and ego-nomics.
Nature symbols abound in this piece; can you identify the messages, what do they speak to you? Fear not the darkness of unknown realms, nor the natural death from which new life grows. Here we honor the pig on an altar of poppies and stay strong for all those who meet their end in terror surrounded by metal and blades.
May the hawk moth guide their energy into blossoms of healing for those still chained in line, for those who still have a chance to taste a different fate. We are here to create it for them. Pig who represents fertility and focus, may this spirit guide us through the birthing of deep systemic change. I may not control the powers of white houses, but I control the steps I take and they are leading me to learn harmonious ways of existing with this planet.
We are creating new prophesies.
Poems below composed after meeting pigs screaming in caged lorries on the way to slaughter in The Netherlands in early August, 2022.
Bring You to Life
I forge your body
I bring you to life
So your life is no longer taken
What they took I give back
Wipe the blade clean
Your blood a waterfall flows
Back into you now, your back
No longer broken
Limbs strewn now sewn together
With this pen here I draw you
Strength blown into the pit
Where your heart once beat
See how enchanting the rose
Grows as you rise
Burning red the poppies blossom
Set free the hawk moth who carries
Your departed brothers and sisters into
The next realm if one exists
Surely you are free there
To live the path of Nature untouched
By man’s wounded intentions
What they took I give back
Place you here upon the gentle bed
Feel the soft breath of you
Weave this ancient spell of thorns
With brush and pen my sacred wand
I bring you back to life
So your life is no longer taken
Yesterday, They Slay You
The ground shook that night
that night when sorrow had no place to go
No place to slumber in soft refuge
for refuge is far from your reach
Although you begged with leaden eyes
you asked what I could not give
Instead you gave me tears through bars
closed to what your legs desire but
open to carry forth a strangled cry
up to the heavens where lightning brews
ready to strike down faces worn
of those who grip the chain
so they may burn, melt, birth into
vessels of clarity stained not by blood but
soil rich with nature’s purest gold
watered by pedals we gather in hands to
stroke away cuts along bruised skin
We lead you into this garden where
glass creaks beneath feet ready
for the evolution absent of “re”
in this age free from your broken bone
we now break the once coveted path where
all that is slain no longer belongs here
Here in this ecological age thunder booms
echoing your voice, we hear you
You are not alone
Here where thorns protect you
We hear you
Here where the ground shakes
We hear you
Art & Poem by Karla Sanders @karlasandersart