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The Seeds of Our Greed (25th September Song)


When I saw them they had no shoes, their stomachs growled like lions, their lips, that of furious angels when they saw me coming. I looked at them, their ragged shirts, their filthy fingernails and feet, a hungry dog’s demeanor, blue eyes, and my appetite to feed them. Beneath their torn gaze, a child cries a melody for greed and for me, for those that move their eyes away, stroll on by with a numb gait.

Oh! When? When will we fix this? When will language wed with deeds and not mistake our shame for duty, our love for anguish, charity as work?

The child’s sleeve, wet with phlegm, hangs low like the air around me. It drips like apathy, our loveless dreams upon our useless critique, it bends my spirit into awful shapes, a depraved clown twisting balloons into phantoms made of loathing, shaped from the least of man.

I watch them leave. They limp away from the curb and take refuge on the sidewalk and wander to the next revolting corner of despair. The child stares back at me like death, her sleeve wagging against a leg as she takes her place in tow ...never to know if I’m human.


© 2010 by mark prime



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