Byzantine Ghetto
Abject poverty
Roofless homes
Three-walled square
Partiality of bread
There is hunger
Half-filled glass
Filthy water
Rancid air
Black smokes
There is pollution
Naked children
Strapless baskets
Untimely deaths
Drought everywhere
There is scarcity
Restricted democrats
Cruel brotherhood
Selfish charity
Fabricated education
There is apathy
There is no cycle
There is no change
There is no beginning
There is no end
This wicked existence
(written on August 10,2011 Singapore)
poem by Chester Maynes
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Have a Heart for Children, Poor!
In poverty born, bred, they live
In misery and future bleak,
All famished, ravished and ill-clad –
Most children of the modern world!
Their parents have to slog all day;
They can’t afford a single meal;
They cannot go to school but stay
As rag-pickers all life and earn.
What folly have their parents done?
The poor are unlucky always;
Their future is like broken glass,
That cannot be together put!
In mud-walled huts and roofs of leaves,
With longing eyes that beg for food,
Half-naked children wait to hear
The foot-steps of their parents come.
With weathered faces, unkempt hair,
With innocence without compare,
With mal-odor that fills the air –
How much of sorrow can they bear?
Their eyes appear to speak and plead
To anyone who passes by,
‘Have mercy on us, poor children;
We smile despite our hunger-pangs! ’
Their eyes look muddy, lack-lustre;
Their anguished hearts, enfeebled frames;
Not enough blood afills their veins;
Their food is deficient always!
Their eyes speak volumes of ill-luck,
And torture by human beings;
Their bodies bear the scars of past
unfairness, meted out by all!
They have to walk for miles bare-foot,
to fetch a pot of water that
can never quench their thirst for long
but causes diarrheal deaths!
And Nature’s furies take their toll,
As rain and floods and droughts unfold;
Diseases turn them invalids –
The God who made them watches on!
But blame must go to mankind first,
Whose wastage, wrongs and ill-wrought plans
Reduced most of the human race
To existence in poverty!
A few on earth have richer turned,
by making rest of poor, poorer!
Their hearts of greed can’t be appeased
Until their death-knell’s gong is belled!
’Tis strange to watch how hunger kills
the children of stark poverty,
Whilst big money goes down the drain
and rodents, pests eat most food-crops!
Beware of eyes of children poor!
In silent, wordless, ways, they plead
To God to change their misfortune:
Unleash His wrath upon the rich!
Copyright by Dr John Celes 09-27-2008
poem by John Celes
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Black Insomia
Bad day
Headache rules my intellect
Forgotten laundry stuck in the vicinity of my kitchen
What is the noise
Of those rats in the cheap ceiling
I do not have cheese for a trap
Oh those antics of many juveniles
I heard some delinquency in the square
They abused a curfew hour and sniffed marijuana’s
A secret lair of those kids
They hide but no one is looking
Their revelry is a devil’s laugh
I sat without slumber
My cola tasted like rust
How many reports will be printed
On dailies worth a dollar each
This wicked hour
Sleep is not a chum
(written on August 10,2011 Singapore)
poem by Chester Maynes
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None More Selfish Than I
Some humans are such selfish creatures and none more selfish than I
The World revolves around me and praise of self I do enjoy
Some call it self survival or call it what you may
And meanwhile people dying of hunger every day.
I've never known what it feels like to be hungry or known of hunger pain
Yet of my poor existence I often do complain
So many poor and oppressed people would envy one like me
It surely can be a relative thing when one talks of poverty.
I meet so many selfish people who for themselves only care
Of the sufferings of others they don't even seem to care
As well as self centred they are ignorant and without thinking they say
That poverty is self inflicted in the World of today.
I may be a selfish bugger but in that I'm not alone
And I am one not without sin so I can't cast the stone
I feel that the World revolves around me how selfish can one be
And only the best of people are blessed with the gift of empathy.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Blaqpearl
Feeding off dump sites
Government preaching about human rights
The minds hunger now difficult to fight
The authority’s pledge I’ve learnt to recite
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Your unwanted possessions
My essential obsessions
My riches, your rags
Your trash, my designer bags
Your side plate, my family’s table
My love unstable
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Ngiphephephi, where am I safe?
Not in my matchbox house
Where the sun knows not the sky
Where it is eternally nightfall
Where trees never grow tall
Insanity, poverty for eternity
You preach about ubuntu
Hold on to your zips because nginsundu
Caring is sharing
Yet you scrutinize as my skin keeps shedding
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Izingane should be seen and not heard
Yet when tears overflow you fly away with the birds
A starving nation builds my judgment of life
A life of manicures and pedicures for your wife
Insanity, poverty for eternity
My brothers, my sisters sighing, crying, dying, trying
Searching for an escape from this death coated,
Pain flavoured bitter-sweet candy on which I was deserted
Stop hearing the voices of black uneducated children
Start listening to the cries of a needy youth
That life just ain’t simple
For I am black because you are white
For I cook because you will eat
For I die so you can live
For I am because you are
Insanity, poverty for eternity
You are born into a cycle where luxury becomes a necessity
A cycle where education is a source of publicity
You get consequently knowledgeable that your heart matures before your head
When you CHOOSE to wet your pillow in bed
When you’re incapably capable to feed yet another head
Where I am born into a cycle where necessities become an improbability, impossibility
A cycle where education is narrowly for minority
So uneducated that your heart learns from the head
Where the tears unintentionally flow because I’m unfed
Where I’m incapable of dependently feeding all my sibling that aren’t yet dead
Insanity, poverty for eternity
For you are in possession of the power to silence the critics
Inspire the pessimists
To astound the optimists
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Black is the coal that lights the fire that houses hell
Black is the pupil of the eye that enables me to see beyond the eyes of the mind
Black is the dark emptiness that “us victims” fear
Black will be the day that blesses us with God’s judgment
Black is the gift of pain that tolerates abuse
Black is the strand of hair that defines my ethnicity
Black is the colour of my love extreme
Think Insanity, poverty for eternity
poem by Yolanda Mbatha
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Pages Of History
Martin Luther King had a dream,
No more racism was his theme.
Gandhi, 'Father of the Nation',
His dream was poverty eradication.
Buddhist monks took a chance,
Against oppression made a stance.
Tanks filled Tiananmen Square,
Students with placards in despair.
Holocaust victims screamed with pain,
Auschwitz ruins still remain.
Hiroshima victims of A-bomb blast,
Children ran naked, faces aghast.
John F. Kennedy in his limo was shot,
Lee Harvey Oswald blamed for the plot.
John Lennon wrote'Give peace a chance',
His peace shattered by a gunman's stance.
Sri Lanka survived the Tsunami flood,
Homes and villages engulfed in mud.
Dafur and Ethiopia ravaged by drought,
Malnutrition and disease remove any doubt.
Poverty and pain over many long years,
But daily we live with the same old fears.
Have we learned nothing from victims tears,
As Armageddon beckons, we ignore wise sears.
poem by John McKay Withey
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Celtic Ducks
Cross over
To opposite self
Plastic, fake, false
Leaving this
Truth of me
Unnatural, artificial
End of us
Hurting me
That’s the truth
(written on August 30,2011 Singapore)
poem by Chester Maynes
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So Deep
Almost half of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa
lives on less than one dollar a day
the highest level of poverty in the world.
My little neurotic sexual white mans mind is aloof
Rio De Janeiro at war
The rich amidst abject poverty
Drug gangs armed and desperate
Darling another silk stocking love poem
2 billion people make less than 2 dollars a day
Over a fourth of the world doesn't eat enough
Distribution of wealth is as real as death
Poverty, despair, gangs, guns, ignorance
2.6 billion people have poor sanitation
4100 children die a day from diarrhea
11,700 die a day from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria
67.5 million children are out of school around the world
Kiss me with disdainful apathy
Suckle our we are going to heaven luxury
Our sweet so called Christian values
Darling isn't our relationship so deep
poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
quote by Mother Teresa
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Letter to Pac (I)
There are still no changes
You wake up in the morning and you ask yourself
Is life worth living or should you kill yourself?
There are still no changes
No difference between the cops and robbers
They’re both heartless
With no conscience
Pulling triggers and Killing niggers
There are still no changes
Days are filled with anger and hidden rage
There’s no peace and there’s still war in the middle east
Some things have changed and some things would never change
You now have a president who’s black
And penitentiaries are not filled with blacks.
Children are still bred on poverty
A poverty that knaws on their sanity
Causing perversity
Somethings have changed and some things would never change
But I guess that’s the way it is.
poem by David Oluwatobi Akinola
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I'll Sleep My Life Away
When dying tomorrow
is no worse than dying today,
I'll sleep my life away;
no hunger unbearable,
no pain so lacerating -
no lie to make up...
no human defamed.
The world shuts down,
the avenues sleep.
The body forgotten,
the heart stops to weep.
With clouds as my roof,
darkness, my covers...
I hover in nothingness
for nothingness is life.
Death is waking up in obscene streets
begging for food that could not satisfy -
for hunger, pain and sorrow meet
under that same old sky.
Death is waking up in misery
and remember you still breathe
the filthy air and you still see
everything obscure;
nowhere to avert to, everyone's averse.
When mirrors are horrible,
no brighter side to look upon...
when dream is but a worn-out lie,
when children's cries linger on
and there are no lullabies
but cars that hover on.
Death is waking up in agony
and remember you still breathe...
weak hands raised up, palms to the heavens
for coins to purchase bread.
Oh the cruel life you have to live,
with filthy water you just but drink -
I'll sleep my life away.
Life to me is when I close my eyes
and everything falls into place.
poem by Jessel Jane Tevar
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Poverty Doesn’t Laugh
Fill the rivers,
With poverty’s tears,
Only then will they be filled with innocent water.
The brick that fills poverty’s throat
Should be filled with heaven’s food
Not hell’s slaughter.
Poverty’s hands should not be,
As empty as our hearts.
Their feet should not feel the piercing sand
While we rot in cars.
Poverty’s teeth are famished
Because they bite empty air,
Our teeth are stuffed with arrogance
Until our blessings with be stripped bare
In the night of hell
When guilt will crawl upon us
The worms and snakes of our sins
Will pierce venom through our selfishness
And there we will stand
Bare of all our blessings
The naked truth for the world to see
Will be paraded across poverty’s eyes
But they will not laugh.
poem by Mehreen Mujeeb
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They Are Our Future!
when a child is born
in a slum area, whether
it be assisted apartments,
trailer parks, low income
housing, or homelessness...
and he grows up amid hunger,
poverty, need, gunfire, drugs,
and street crime...
and the world he becomes an
adult in offers him little
chance for employment, or
education...
what do we expect?
what we often get is an angry
young man just looking for a way
to survive!
our young people most often become
the opportunity we leave for them.
we are responsible for their future.
for they are our future!
there are those who make their way
out of these abject conditions, and
go on to make the world a better place.
these should be our heroes!
but every child should have food,
shelter, a loving environment, an
equal opportunity for education, and
hope for employment! every child
should have an equal opportunity
to live his/or her, dream!
again, these children, are our future!
we are responsible!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Black coffee and the news
Black coffee and the news
~
I hold the cup in my hands
Burning at my finger tips
My eyes half focused on the television
I’m still half asleep, but alert enough
Watching the news, the world go to hell
Half is pleading poverty, half dying
Somewhere the is a war going on
A young man has just died
The reporter talks of a climbing number
I am unable to digest it just yet
The coffee is extra strong and black
Giving me enough bite to face the day
It lacks what I need to face the news
Which reads out blacker still
I’d change the channel
If only I could find the remote
Looking for some happy news
Something, anything to make me smile
It’s a new day beginning with the old routine
poem by Matthew Holloway
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Peace or Poverty
Their skin soaks up the heat
Leaving it as black as the midnight sky,
Their eyes wide, white, pleading
Begging to the passersby.
They litter the street
Half naked bodies,
Red and colouring their feet
Searching for a entrance
A door out of the circle of poverty.
Poverty means destruction
Destruction means fear
Behind locked doors we sit in early evening
Too scared to see a black face
Terrified of black feet crossing the threshold.
But why be fearful of your slaves,
Those you whip and beat
Treating like the dirt from the doormat
Where you wipe your feet.
Role diversity causes poverty
Poverty destroys peace
But peace minus poverty
Means Equality should increase.
poem by Sonali Shah
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Misery
children all over the world in poverty, hunger and misery.
is this the way it's supposed to be?
is this the reason they were brought into this world?
is this what you want to see for your little boy and girl
as adults can't we see-we have to stop this hunger and misery.
god has given us the power to concieve
so let us set our children free.
free of what we have created-poverty, hunger and hatred.
let us work to become as one
let our children see the sun
for right now their world is in a dark mist
with not a flicker of light to be found.
their hopes torn to the ground..
there has to be a place to start.
search your heart-search your mind
the answer is within our grasp
it is something that has to last.
poem by Louis Rams
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Deepest Sympathy!
Accumulated humanity
Blended with hi-power beauracracy
Education for rural locality
Cordiality and honesty
Sincerarity policy
Also with royality
To enhance healing poverty
Being flexibality exemplifing administrative quality
We prey you sir, you may attain Nibbana.
Teachers and students, staff of Departments of Education Uva Province srilanka.Zonal Education office Badulla.
Untimely death of Badulla Srilanka Zonal Director of Education A.R.Ramanayaka.
poem by Sisirachandra Vaduge
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The Sobs Of The Starving Children
We know about them from the radio and television and the hungry getting hungrier by the day
But we do not hear the sobs of the starving children from where we live they seem so far away
On the six o clock news at times we do see footage of hungry
children in a Land where poverty and disease is rife
And we feel a twinge of sadness that we cannot help them since we have got our own struggles in life.
Still the sobs of the hungry children are growing louder and
not all of them live in a far Country
And not all of them in the slums of the big city there's such a thing as hidden poverty
The single mother raises her brood on welfare and she has to struggle for to make ends meet
And they survive on bread and tea and milk and cornflakes since she cannot afford to buy them meat.
Banks and corporations make billions in yearly profits and we read and hear of their financial gain
But they don't help to feed the starving children and the growing scourge of poverty remain
A mile from where the billionaire lives there's poverty and hunger yet of their plight he does not wish to know
Still for him to grow wealthier others must grow poorer and
life goes on as it did years ago.
To find want you don't have that far to travel for poverty is everywhere and near
And though the starving children keep on sobbing louder their cries for food we do not seem to hear
And sad to say that those who talk and dream of an egalitarian society will never live to see their dreams come true
And in a World where there is want and hunger the majority of the World's wealth still with the wealthy few.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Square Water
SQUARE WATER
When the bus collapsed on the road
To the capital
A man in blue opened the hood
And spit at the engine
While off to the side
Down a rough slope
Was a square cut body of water
Neutral and calm for all:
Water buffalo, children and dogs.
A radiantly happy girl is climbing out.
The buffalo gaze over at two men
In white pith helmets and black clothes
Who seem to be digging a hole.
A bicycle is parked between the children
And the men
The water is roiled by swimmers
Splashing in the brown liquid.
Bruegel should have been there
To mix the ordinary with something
Unexpected:
Perhaps a boy with wings falling
Off in the distance.
That rapid movement might have caught
The eyes of the buffalo
But the men would have been too busy
Digging and the children would have been
Having too much fun to look up.
When the bus started I framed
A shot that included them all except
For the imaginary falling boy
Who only hit the water in my imagination.
poem by Burgess Needle
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The Long Drought Is Over
The long drought is over some weather experts believe
But weather patterns the experts have been known to deceive
In parts of the Country huge flooding the weather seems strange
But then we are in the age of climate change
The ferocity of Nature cannot be denied
In flooding tragedies up country seven people have died
Their cars by the flood were swept off of the roadway
Their deaths by drowning the big news story of the day
For to combat extreme weather patterns we need more than God on our side
Nowadays Natural disasters are occuring Worldwide
In drought ravaged Lands millions of refugees
And thousands are dying of hunger and disease
The long drought is over some weather experts do say
But the moods of Nature changing every day.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Hunger
Children of Haiti feeling hunger,
Children of Haiti feeling thirst,
Bellies getting bloated
like they will burst.
Not enough food, not enough water
Eyes filled with sadness
on every son and daughter.
Children of rich ones feel no hunger,
children of rich ones feel no thirst.
Bellies are filled up
like they could burst.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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