I grew up in a very modest house. We were poor-we lived on the poverty level. We all got jobs as young kids.
quote by Chely Wright
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Growing Up In America!
you turned your children loose,
out in the streets of poverty....
only a few given a chance,
the rest left to fend for theirselves!
no jobs, unless you wanna soldier,
kill or be killed for oil....
then no jobs when you return,
and no house to return to!
food stamps and government aid,
till that eventually runs out....
then back on the streets where you started,
kill or be killed to survive....
dealing dope, dealing flesh, stealing cars,
no hope of anything more!
get caught and go to prison,
not in a gang, better join one!
poor white kids, poor kids of color,
growing up in America!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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These Americans are among the working poor with full-time jobs earning $5.15 an hour. Millions fall into this boat, even more when you consider that the poverty line has not been adequately adjusted to reflect the true level of poverty in this country.
quote by Marcy Kaptur
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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On Crime and Punishment
the angry young man,
who grew up in poverty,
whose mother worked two minimum wage jobs,
just to give him food and shelter...
who lost her jobs
when the economy fell,
and became sick with no insurance...
the angry young man,
who robbed the convenience store,
and while trying to avoid capture,
killed a young police officer...
who left behind a young pregnant wife,
and a three year old little boy,
left without a daddy....
the angry young man,
in jail awaiting trial...
awaiting justice....
where do we begin?
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Poverty In The 21st Century
It’s the 21st century
The media displays it day and night,
Poverty.
Poverty across the globe lies
Poverty cries out from the belly of little boys
Little girls, parents too
Desperately searching for food,
Shelter, clothing, for love,
Companion, for attention
Those with plenty, refuse
To amend, a world haunted by
Poverty.
Is poverty affecting the rich?
Are their poverty the same
As the poor in financial constrains?
For they, too, poverty of love
I see poverty in the learned
I see poverty in those whose
Selfish acts are destroying society.
I see poverty in all level of humanity
The world is still an imperfect place
Yet life is still beautiful, the wind
Blows, we see it not, give thanks
For what you possess, now go,
Help if you can along the way,
Help to eradicate poverty
In your surrounding, widen
Your boundary across your
Country, to nations of the world.
Help to fight poverty, now!
poem by Winston Harding
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The People We Don't Want To Know
From pay check to pay check many working class people have two jobs,
then it all dries up and there is no work and manual labourers are
called work shy…. I knew a woman with three jobs she was tired coming
home, yet boiled potatoes and fried fish for her children before falling
asleep, coughing a lot. She had tuberculosis and sent to a sanatorium,
and the children sent to foster homes. Her illness caused by unhygienic
home, people from the social services said. No one asked why a woman
should hold down three jobs to fed her children and no one said she was
a “deserving” poor whatever this word means. This inequity will go on till
we understand poverty is not a choice but a mishap of birth, few escape,
those who do will always carry the dishonour, the mark of Cain, by being
more hateful of poverty and branding the poor lazy. As the average actor
who got a role in a film that made him famed, his hate his own class, poor
himself once, reveals his fear of slipping back to poverty again; he harms
his flesh and blood in an attempt to get rid of his own stench of privation.
But the Haves can smell an imposter, but they do like money so perhaps
his daughter will make it to the The People We Don't Want To Knowball.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Poor Poor Kids
Be quiet! Don't make a sound!
Speak when you're spoken to!
What awful fearful bounds
Speaking only on cue
Poor poor kids
You can't go out and play today!
It's punishment, unfitting the crime
This parental power display
For kids, like serving hard-time
Poor poor kids
Adults wield such power
They must be listened to
They can their poor kids cower
As they dim their kids world view
Power seeds have been sown
Hopefully they'll not sprout
So when kids are fully grown
Their kids will not self doubt
poem by Stanley Cooper
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Blaming Poverty On The Poor
Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty
A.K.A, cheapest labor force
Poverty works, never ever unemployed
A much needed commodity to justify
White-collar crime classes
Teaching dastardly deeds—to procure monetary needs-
fostering avarice greed
Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty
A.K.A., cheapest labor force
Poverty creates jobs for those financing the societal
Institution of ya godda pay more taxes
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Look! what Enron did to those less fortunate
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Did not corporations want a billion dollar welfare check
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty
A.K.A., cheapest labor force
No penance just punishment augmenting the pillar of economic pillaging
Poor people put in the pillory from the political pulpit
Poverty is prime property
Poverty pimps portrayed as political preachers purely punitive but polite
The pluralization of Poverty provides prestige of the patricians
Poverty, the promissory note from the bureaucratic infidel
The Truth will tell—the truth will tell
Poverty the patriotic prisoner on trial for treason
Copyright 2001
poem by Josephine DixonBanks
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What is Poverty?
What does poverty really entail?
How bad does it have to get?
For some a bad economy
Is poverty from where they sit
But if you look back to hard times
During the early years
It’s not having a home to live in
The hopelessness can bring tears
The Great Depression had it all
No jobs and no place to dwell
Barely enough to eat or nothing at all
These folks went through hell
Thread bare was the term for clothing
Dirt poor was a phrase as well
Looking at black and white pictures
Oh yes, you can surely tell
It’s a time when we hope God
Is able to see
That folks need His help because
They have slipped into poverty!
poem by Marilyn Lott
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21 - Victorian Poverty
A period of extreme poverty of the lower working classes
As they worked to the death the rich sat politely on their arses
London’s poor tried to scrape a living doing jobs the devil created
As the rich sat at their windows laughing at the pitiful souls they hated
The poor would have sooner died than enter the poor houses control
As it was not fit to harbor a single living human soul
Small boys were used to clean narrow sooted chimneys
While in the coal mines children worked on their hands and knees
Although this golden age pioneered many useful inventions
Children privileged to go to school were whipped instead of detentions
And as the poor worked for a life at every waking hour
The rich covered their stench with perfume and wild flowers
The poor had nothing and hardly anything to eat
While the rich enjoyed tea and honey and sherbet lemon sweets
In Victorian London the poor just lived and died
The rich never really noticed the rich never really cried
A period of extreme poverty of the lower working classes
As they worked to the death the rich sat politely on their asses
poem by Nicola Burkett
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My Modest Life....[LONG; Personal; Humor]
i grew up in a modest home. the nearby country i did roam.
modest were my mom and dad. four modest siblings i also had.
geneva was a modest town. at graduation i wore a modest cap and gown.
(ok….my cap had a gold tassel. about that, please don't give me a hassle.)
then i modestly went to cornell; that i'd quit three years later who could tell?
i modestly quit my church beliefs. that there's no hell, for me i'm betting.
i became a conscientious objector and worked two years in hospital setting.
i roomed in a modest home. by foot, bike, and bus i did roam.
then i shared an apartment with brother don. i did modest jobs for modest wages.
my general appearance i think was plain. i was modest, ….not vain.
except for occasional, mild 'depression', it seemed i had not a care.
then (past twenty-five years old) i sought a partner from the sex pool more fair.
first wife (pam) was not so modest…..if by modest one means plain.
she gave birth to our modest daughter (shannon) ....... after a short labor but lots of pain.
pam and i shared five modest homes, and we had a modest dog.
we had a modest divorce....though nine years together we did log.
then i had modest apartments and two modest girlfriends, and kept my modest postal job.
then i married and divorced wife two (debbie) , .....she was at times irrational and a slob.
my very modest yugo i replaced with a honda, the last of my modest cars.
the end of marriage to third wife (donna) i blame (in part) on her emotional lifetime scars.
in 2004 i retired 'early'…. as post office chose to downsize.
at the time i lived in modest comfort.... in a senior citizen highrise.
i modestly pursued volunteer work as i'd done on and off since '86.
with no ties binding me i moved to hometown geneva; some would call it 'move to the sticks'.
i spent a modest few months in cousin's apartment. eye to eye we did not see, .......
so i got my own modest place near college fieldhouse, and walked indoor track for a modest fee.
i found a modest café, 'flour petal', and many modest hours there i enjoyed.
i wrote poems, and........with thoughts of a new partner i no longer toyed.
i met a modest new friend angel. he, it turned out, had some 'issues'.
i made a modest bed of banana boxes, and blew my nose on toilet tissues.
i developed mild hypertension. it seems in control now without pills.
i walked roads and sidewalks in modest shoes, wore modest clothes with no frills.
then a former postal customer, and old guy, henry, 'said': ‘find a geneva woman on the internet'.
he jarred me into action, and that's how my present wife i 'met'.
after a month of emails we met in ithaca (new york state) , though she lived on the west coast.
did she find me irresistable? i don't know, ......and i shall not boast.
she lured me to join her, in san carlos, in her new, not-so-modest-but-small house.
my wife also has a small though not-so-modest car, a prius, which can be quiet as a mouse.
i flew here on a trial basis but stayed to share our lives together.
i'm still a modest guy, trying not to be spoiled by the mild san francisco bay area weather.
i've had a modest ponytail, and i'm modest about my child's success.
but i've eaten a few immodest restaurant meals. they weren't my idea......as you might guess.
i'd say our tv set's not modest, but it's only used to watch library flicks.
(by 'modest' i mean plain or simple; with luxury i seldom mix.)
but i'm not COMPLETELY modest when it comes to my self-image. [ I THINK I'M REALLY GREAT! ]
i have lots of common sense, and......i'm very seldom ever late.
(Jan. and Aug.2011)
poem by Bri Edwards
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The American Declaration of Co-Dependence
The rich need the less rich
to oil their lives like soundless hinges
and do the jobs they would not want to do.
The poor need the less poor
to make the jobs for them to do
While those in the middle
have aspirations; work hard;
love their kids; and sometimes
feel warm glow of gratitude
for being safe and middling.
Then when times are tough…
perhaps it’s time for charity
and co-dependence
and some noble human impulse
that’s social without the ’ism
that scares the hell out of some folks
so don’t take it out
on the President;
America is you.
Co-dependence.
Like when they first
came off the boat
that passed the Statue
with a cry of hope
in many colours.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Poverty Grass
Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know, alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.
Poverty grass
The paupered seed
So sickly poor, alas;
The souls of the great untamed grow weak
Despair
On poverty grass.
And you, my friend,
Grew sick awhile,
And cried and cried, alas;
While I grew fat on a flowering weed
Called pride
And poverty grass.
And when you left
The field to me
I almost died, alas;
For I was left in a fallow field
Piled high
In poverty grass.
Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know, alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.
24 January 1980
poem by David Lewis Paget
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A House Of Joy!
A house full of just played toys, ,
Just fed bowls, just torn papers,
Newly added drawing to the walls,
What a pleasure to the eyes and souls,
The kids are there in that house,
Growing as inquisitive as they have to be,
Let them play in their own house,
Don't control them in the name of rules,
Young mothers, don't toil too hard to please,
All the notorious oldies of the world,
Teach your children the morals and to be bold,
Enjoy your life with your children and husband,
Unkempt house is not an eyesore,
When the kids are growing to be old,
Unkempt heatt is a real curse,
When the old and young comfortable with.
poem by Veeraiyah Subbulakshmi
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His People
the old man sat out here on the porch,
shaking, smoking a cigarette... waiting
on his ride.
i sat down to talk to him, mostly to listen...
'you know, my daughter and her husband
lost their jobs, and their house. so we
moved them and their kids in with us...
they're strung out on them pills, we cant
get them off... hell, she's took everything
in the house she could sell....'
and i just listened.... him, and his wife,
both on disability... barely able to get
from point a to point b...
every day i hear these stories... all different,
but all the same in the end.... no jobs,
nowhere to stay, no health insurance...
and dependence... usually pills...
these are the forgotten people, the people
without a voice... if Jesus were alive today,
these would be His people!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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The House On Centerville Road
We stopped beside the highway
And gazed at the old house
I told my wife, “That’s where I lived”
When I was just a little sprout
It looked smaller than it once did
Back so many years ago
Even then it was old and creaky
But, as a kid, I didn’t know
Weathered boards were loose and falling
Saplings grew up through the porch
The old tin roof was rusted orange
And the yard looked like a forest
Here dwells my oldest memories
From so many years ago
When our young family lived here
In the house on Centerville road
Those walls once rang with laughter
And the energy of two young lads
Riding stick horses all around the place
Trying to “herd” our collie, Pat
But, Pat knew more than we did
When she’d hear Mama shout
She’d turn us back from the road
And herd two boys toward the house
Dad got a job and we moved to town
Well before I started school
So, my memories are short and sketchy
But, I’ve found there are quite a few
My wife retrieved her camera
And as I turned the key to go
Snapped a picture from her window
Of the house on Centerville road
10/07/07
poem by C.R. Clark
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A Family
If you have a child in your lap,
young moms would visit with kids to make them play around,
if you have a toddler,
many toddler will come and make your house upside down
if you have a teenage boy or girl,
young crowd willl throng your house with lots of noise,
if you have a married daughter in law in your familty,
young married ladies will get together to gossip and have fun,
if you have a oldies in your house,
old retired people will come to have a cup of coffee,
and when you donot have anyone,
no one will come to your house to say hello.
poem by renu Vig sharma sharma
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You Are The Mother Beneath Our Wings Dedicated to my mother who thought she had nothing to give-but gave the wisest things!
You are the mother beneath our wings, born into poverty brought us the
wealth of many kings, When you art young and don't have anything, you rely on
your Mother to give you everything, For a poor mother who had nothing you gave the
wisest things, You are the Mother beneath our wings.
Being poor was a rich experience for us and heartbreaking for you
You planted many seeds and nourished your ten kids needs
You gave us the wealth of may kings-coming from poverty taught us many things
The way you loved your life, being the kissin' bandit's wife
We were dirt poor, but it wasn't all bad
If material wealth as all we had-We wouldn't appreciate life and be thankful for what
we have. What you gave was unique, prized above material things
To each child special gifts you did bring
We were never too poor to give something-when you think you can't give nothing
You van give the wisest things-The love you gave will be treasured more than anything
When the trumpet blows and you rise up to meet your king
REMEMBER the lilies blooming in spring and that you gave your best in EVERYTHING!
poem by Miriam McKee
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Mangan
Arguably the greatest poet old Ireland has seen
'Twas he penned the poem known as 'Dark Rosaleen'
In eighteen forty nine in his mid forties in poverty he died
Though true genius of him never can be denied
The great James Clarence Mangan Ireland's National bard
His journey through life was to say the least hard
He lived as he died in abject poverty
Yet one could not name many poets as great as he
From consumption and poor diet and neglect he died very young
For him no State funeral and he was unsung
Despite his hard life it seems a remarkable feat
That so many great poems the great poet did bequeath
To Ireland and it's people though he died just past his prime
As one of the poor souls of the Dublin of his time.
poem by Francis Duggan
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The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it turned out that John Brown was buried down the road from my house and that he had lived there longer than anywhere else and his house was still standing.
quote by Russell Banks
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If you increase taxes now on - at any level, it's going to make it harder to create jobs And we've lost 2 1/2 million jobs since the stimulus package passed. We're at 9.6 unemployment. So I don't think we tax too little, I think we spend too much.
quote by Lindsey Graham
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