Days of Darkness
Rats
In their thousands
creeping over the desolate land
scouring for food - for life
The stench was sickening
The sky black, thickening
so no light passed through
Ants
In their millions
crawling through the empty houses
looking for crumbs - anything
dead bodies all over
or writhing in pain
as the skies darken again
Humans
In their hundreds
Staggering through the empty streets
In their hunt for companionship - and food
cursing their predators
Dead or dying from pain
As the whole earth dies.
1979
poem by Penni Currie
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Empty Old Houses
Empty Old Houses
Empty old houses can talk…
But one must know how to listen…
to hear them
Empty old houses have stories…
But one must be eager to listen…
to hear them
Empty old houses can suffer..
But one must have empathy …
To feel it
Empty old houses can feel pain
But one must be able to bear it …
To feel it
Empty old houses have memories
But one must believe … that they have…
To share them
Empty old houses contain people’s lives
But one must believe…that they do…
To share them
Empty old houses can seem dead and deserted
But one must know that they’re not..
To know them
Empty old houses can teem with life’s pleasures
But one must walk through
to sense the aura of life
Empty old houses abound in life’s treasures
But one cannot help but…
To admire them
poem by David Whalen
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Empty Boxes
woke up to Voltaire
and Tolstoy, black coffee,
and cigarettes....
heavy fog on a crooked road,
Christmas lights blinking,
and a dead stillness....
the moan of empty houses,
empty factories, empty streets,
and the whisper of children,
food stamps hung in their stockings!
an old stray cat waiting to be fed,
and the heaviness of the mongrels,
left to work the streets.
somewhere bells are ringing,
right here not the scent;
a cross painted on a brick wall,
empty boxes blown by the wind!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Hunger, The Pang
Our mother earth gives
For one good grain sown
Hundreds of fresh grains
For our food in return.
How many sweet fruits
For a life time she gives
For one seed she takes
As one tree it grows?
Any animal on the land
Or any bird on the air
For its morrow's food
Does it take all the care?
For the food on the ground
How a crow makes a sound
Of 'caw' to call crows around
Just to share what it found?
When big cooked rice balls
An elephant in its mouth takes
A part of it on the floor spills
That feeds hundreds of ants.
But when a have on this earth
For his self, the food he hoards,
Doesn't the have-not's mouth
Go unfed for days countless?
The food in a pompous feast
A junk of it goes as rubbish.
If this goes to the poor atleast
Will that not fulfill God's wish?
The worst pain in the world
Is what the hunger gives
But this can be solved
If all follow the crows.
poem by Rajaram Ramachandran
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Don't Waste Food
Hundreds and thousands have toiled under the scorching sun of summer,
to grow the food which so comfortably we eat.
think of food as the fruit of labor of thousands of hours,
rather than just rice and wheat.
millions die due to lack of food, so is their fate,
but we are lucky to have every time enough in our plate.
we may never go to the fields to produce the food,
but my friend 'food saved is food produced'.
so lets take a vow today to put in our plate only that much which we can eat,
so that even a single single grain may not go waste.
poem by Sunny Mittal
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For The Wounded Womb
There he is like the ocean
Holding an empty shell
Empty shell filled with
God’s food
That every lovable things on earth would live
a day more to taste.
It’s not the food you eat has love
It’s not love you have is adored
Palate of life
We mix it with pain and pleasure.
Tears, sweat, blood…
all ooze out from the vein of Hard work…
How can things unseen and invisible
Can be so true
Can be so rooted
here I see this beautiful earth
everything merged through these invisible forces
like a blind man see the colours of life
and weave his own colour…
red through green, green through blue
burns the angst for not being able to see…
but creates these are the colours he creates…
and lay before us the senses to feel…
Blooming into every man’s beauty
Farer man sing evening songs
We wait for another morning…
I licked through the plate of food
Gulping down my thirst and hunger
Just like a hungry begging human on street
I lived for the food that comes from some distant land
And an unknown lover make it
And an unknown lover taste it
A fistful of food…
Opens her empty hands
She lives
She learns to live
She learns to eat
The passion of eating through
What I yearn to see one day
Your hands feeding a hungry mother
In the corner of a silenced street.
Cuddling the child of love
Heals a mother’s wounded womb…
Here he is like the ocean…
Holding the empty shell
Empty shell filled with
God’s food…
poem by Lovita J R Morang
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Bess
Ours are the streets where Bess first met her
cancer. She went to work every day past the
secure houses. At her job in the library
she arranged better and better flowers, and when
students asked for books her hand went out
to help. In the last year of her life
she had to keep her friends from knowing
how happy they were. She listened while they
complained about food or work or the weather.
And the great national events danced
their grotesque, fake importance. Always
Pain moved where she moved. She walked
ahead; it came. She hid; it found her.
No one ever served another so truly;
no enemy ever meant so strong a hate.
It was almost as if there was no room
left for her on earth. But she remembered
where joy used to live. She straightened its flowers;
she did not weep when she passed its houses;
and when finally she pulled into a tiny corner
and slipped from pain, her hand opened
again, and the streets opened, and she wished all well.
poem by William Stafford
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Food Song
Recipes are just combinations
And what are these just mere salutations
When they plead for our salvation
Are these just the lies that feed our nations
As enemies we never learn
A shaking hand is never firm
But as the path clears we turn away from it all
All these jealousies we have earned
Oh so shamelessly they still return
All the outlandish lessons we have burned
Yes and we're imprisoned by the whole thing
Who gets something really good to eat
Why do we want the world to fall at our feet
Like a child throws its food to the floor
Like an apple that is rotten to the core
As all the memories they kick in
The gravy, it is thickening
The combination is sickening
But we still press on
And as all the memories they kick
While the gravy it is thickening
And the combination is sickening
But we still press on
How to know what's in your head
How to know if you're just playing dead
But it's all gonna be that way when you say you're alone and imprisoned by your yesterdays
Oh you know what you really want
But yet you've turned yourself into what you don't really wanna be
Here we are and we know don't have to be that way
yes u know it
song performed by by Eagle Eye Cherry
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Plain Pain
Ask Caser, what true pain is
A tale of true Pain, A story of his
Doubly pain when stabbed by ones’ own
Dying disgusted and disregarded
Merciless, rejoicing even after he is dead
He dies disturbed; souls like his never are free
Dies with the most unfamiliar words “Et tu, Brute
Death that brings merriness to a mob
A life that has been rob
What a pain it must have been
I for one have seen
A far worse scene
Real pain is that pain that is felt fresh
A would that pierces heart
Is fatal that a skinned flesh
Like a broken heart drowning in wine
True pain is either yours or mine
poem by Nima Tharchen
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We Cry for Food and They Give Us Bullets
Food! Food! Food!
It is all that we need
It is all that we need
to calm down our spirits!
It is food that fills
that fills the empty pangs
of our stomachs,
pangs that make us yawn
but cannot sleep
that make us gulp
but cannot vomit,
that make our saliva
taste sour and acidic!
We cry for food
like the helpless little children
with the art to attract attention
by our street demonstrations.
Yes, we cry for food like little children
to calm down our spirits,
that the cry cannot at all be neglected
for it is food,
it is food that soothes our spirits.
But you give us bullets
on the streets where we stage
our cry for food
You give us bullets
instead of food.
But even bullets cannot silence
our cry for food
for as long as we`re hungry
we shall be like little children
that will ever cry for food.
poem by Elizabeth Padillo Olesen
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Overweight with Food
Are you just a tub of lard and
Vastly overweight?
Do you think that when you die you'll
Need a piano crate
To act as coffin for your frame? -
Chosen as you die in shame, with
Only you to take the blame
For years of eating much the same:
A daily calorific fest
Gourmands of your ilk digest!
Is your heart in final fling and
Nearly set to burst?
Are your arteries bunged and clogged and
Feeling now the worst
For wear? - your aneurysm fit to blow
While blood as thick as rising dough
Cries 'Halt! ' to any hope of flow:
A dreadful state to put on show
In front of any nurse!
Best you hail a hearse.
Copyright Mark R Slaughter 2009
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
Oh! Food food food food food food food foooooood!
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Christmas Eve
dawn creeping
o'er the mountains,
and through bare limbed trees....
Christmas Eve...
amid the hustle and bustle,
colored lights and wrapping paper....
families and friends....
the streets still alive with those
who have nowhere else to be....
empty houses, empty trailers,
stray dogs and abandoned cars....
somewhere church bells are ringing.
a baby born in a bare apartment,
the rats scurry to meet him,
the pot on the stove empty.
no curtains on the windows,
bare bulbs, no shades.
no angels, no wise men,
an eviction notice on the door...
yet another baby Jesus,
will he make it, will he die?
will he bring light and salvation?
or will they find his small body
in a dumpster with the trash?
fate, or understanding,
holiness knocks on the door,
again, and again!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Hard To Swallow
We eat to live
We eat to grow
We eat to endulge ourselves,
In the greatness of food
We eat to provide comfort
We eat to be accepted
We eat as it is part,
Of our lives
Food comes in all different forms,
Shapes and sizes
It can be a bean as small as a nail
Or a christmas turkey the size of a horse
Food is a necessity
Food is a way of life
Food is enjoyed
Food is loved
But for some,
Food is despised
Eating brings pain
Eating brings weight
Eating brings illness
Eating brings hate
Eating means endless pain
A pain that wont stop,
Until the food inside,
Is forced out
Eating means weight gain and hurt
So,
It's best not to eat at all
The aching pain of hunger drifts away,
With several ibuprofein.
The battle with food is a constant struggle
To overcome the eating disorder
To take one bite,
And Swallow!
poem by Chris jones
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Dead Poets
dead poets; old cars
junked in heaps
in front of
abandoned houses...
empty mailboxes
rusting to the
ground...
empty swings creaking
in the late evening breeze;
a bottle of wine,
half-empty,
moans in the shadows.
the fields have been picked,
nothing left, but sweat stained dirt....
even the embers have grown cold,
and the pot is empty.
the sounds and smells of living
linger by unmarked stones...
dead poets; old cars...
running on empty!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Dead In The Wombs
those same children
who died in the waters
that swallowed Atlantis....
those same children,
starving 'neath Africa's sun....
dead from the bombings
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran....
their bodies thrown into dumpsters
here in the United States....
dead on the borders,
dead in the oil filled waters,
dead on the cocaine streets,
dead in the prisons...
dead in the colleges,
dead in the unemployment lines....
dead on the picket lines,
dead, handcuffed, and beaten....
dying, and dead, world crazy spinning...
as the 'light of the world'
sputters, and goes out....
dead in the wombs of the
homeless, hopeless, and forgotten...
dead by our hands!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Sonnet: The World has Aplenty
The earth has place for more people to live;
Its trees have wood for more houses to build;
Its soil can generate more food and give;
There isn’t a dearth of good souls for a guild.
The rivers have fresh-water plentiful;
The earth has much reserve of oil and ore;
If peace prevails, earth looks so beautiful;
The rich nations cannot the poor ignore.
The money/ food wastage can millions feed;
Each man must love his neighbor honestly;
The brotherhood of nations is the need;
The human race is one and one must be!
Wake up humans! There is no time to waste;
Let not your greed enslave others in haste!
6-2-2001
poem by John Celes
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Syrup Sponge
Pour a pint of cream
Upon my spongy bulge!
Scoop me with a
Hefty spoon;
Taste my essence -
Do you swoon?
Feed your self-esteem; indulge
In me until you burst -
Death by syrup sponge - you're cursed!
And as the count in inches gain
Upon your weary waist, the strain
Will tell, but you'll not care -
Steeped in sponge, you're unaware!
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010
food food food food food food food
food food food food food food food food
food food food food food food
food food food food food food
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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An empty sky
Looking vacantly at the empty sky.
Asking hundreds of questions and why
Not cursing fate and feeling shy
Yet so much eagerness and helplessness to try
Sky has nothing much to offer
Many hollow ideas and to differ
Vast empty horizon as over stretched empire
Only blue color to be taken into account and admire
It is like entire life spread over number of years
Sometimes shadowed by pain and fears
Sometimes moon’s cool light to enjoy
Morning cool breeze to stay for little joy
You will have to feel it up with colors
Some to be colorless like white color
Pain and sacrifice with orange
And dry green leaves for age
Over all it depends how you steer the course
Either you make it worthwhile or filled with remorse
Try to come out of it successfully
And make it look so nice and beautifully
So look at it differently and give the shape
Never feel dejected and fall in the trap
Life is what you make out of it
Turn it with the wind and feel comfortably and fit
poem by Hasmukh Amathalal
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Bodhisattva Nightmare
i felt the bullet
as your body fell,
the sickening gasp of light
lost in the void...
i felt the empty
of your stomach turning,
as you staggered weakly
down that long dusty road.
i felt the bone crushing pain
as he struck your face,
again and again....
i felt the sickness
of the stench of the alley...
i felt the fear and despair of the cell,
the not knowing when
it was going to come...
i felt the hatred and fear
they tormented you with,
for who you loved,
and the way you lived....
i felt the hopelessness
of the hard ass streets,
the gun in your pocket...
the monkey on your back....
i felt.... and still feel!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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My Quest
My tears for hunger continues.
My quest for water is running short.
The joy of shelter I could only dream of,
With no shirt on my back, not even a sole of a shore on my feet.
The great quest continues.
Don't no the taste of food because I hardly have any..
Never had a recreation
Nor any form of entertainment.
All I could think of whats my next meal.
Searching the vast desert for food is brutal, days of walking with no success,
Am in pain need food
My tiny stomach hurts, my legs weak, my hands dead, I can't breathe.
My life less body is damaged.dead from hunger.....
poem by Donavan Avril
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The Retired Commander In Chief
For one who profess a strong belief in God
To say the least I found it rather odd
That he sent his Country's troops to fight in his uncalled for war
From their home shore to a Nation afar.
A war where hundreds of thousands of people have died
Their right to life by him has been denied
Yet for his crimes against Humanity he will never pay
An honourable life in retirement is his lot today.
For most of his war dead terrorists he does blame
Terrorists his war created for to commit acts of shame
He should have known that's what happens when other Countries you invade
For conflict the price in human blood is paid.
A hero to many but a major criminal to me
He gave rise to crimes against Humanity
As well as causing thousands of deaths he destroyed the archictecture of another Land
Many in positions of power history does not understand.
The mothers of his war dead grieving today
Leave him to Karma is all one can say
His life achievements hundreds of thousands of war dead
Perhaps the power at his disposal did go to his head.
poem by Francis Duggan
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