End the Hunger (the 6th September Song)

“Our lives are to be used and thus to be lived as fully as possible, and truly it seems that we are never so alive as when we concern ourselves with other people.” _Harry Chapin

~

It seems new but it’s the same.

I am seeing them on the street corners and in my dreams.

I’m surrounded by them; shells of flesh leaning on bone. They are smiling, these great empty mouths with love oozing into the gray stream of childhood. Time is man’s creation, shaped to hold the air away from love, made to shroud the mother’s goodness and mask reality in minutes.

I am sitting on the porch in awe of the wind lifting the leaves away from summer’s shade that retreats with the birds calling down from the heavens. The hungry are nearing them with each painful smile, each uneaten meal and shattered heart. I am among them. I breathe near their crisis, near enough to glimpse the crimson ache, yet far enough away to remain unscathed.

The world is drying up from man’s refuse, sympathy curdling with time, rotting from the inside out, howling that we unlock our love.

I am writing these words with an urgency, an expectation of love. Love of great importance and without time. No clocks... only a most vibrant charity.

O! Heed hunger’s howl! Weep! Pray! Scream! We’re cleaving ourselves from the mother, hands dangling like prayers without nourishment.

Most of us haven’t known hunger like we soon will- like a Palestinian child whose hands are upon the wall, like an Iraqi whose blood is spilt upon her offspring’s veins, or like a starving man clutching a child’s ashen hand. The flesh of hunger is taut against our bones, our beating hearts frown their faceless clocks. We are living near enough to see, yet go unseen. We are living near enough to hear, yet go unheard. We are living near enough to touch, yet go untouched.

I am seeing them on the street corners and in my dreams.

© 2010 by mark prime

Freedom From Hunger