Skip to main content

16th September Song (another poem for the hungry)

(I have been having this dream lately. The same one, but I cannot, for the life of me, recall what it’s about.)

The money we thrust so easily into the mouth of a machine- soda, candy, chips, a car-wash, cigarettes, coffee, anything.

The human mouth of billions sealed in a death sentence, a tiny bird wedged in the pipes, a young deer in the road, unsure of where to go, startled.

We needn’t concern ourselves with these creatures. Life is a candle.

The suffering is too great to fathom, the grief. We all suffer in this life, hunger’s just another form.

At times the pressure is too great and the beast howls a song for me. I feel the wrench of regret and stop, turn to the consumption machine, facing it, I stiffly push my crumpled nourishment into the slot.

(I remember the dream now. I am this machine and- or am I the sustenance the world seeks? It was dark.)


© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

Comments

  1. When reading your poems I am always reminded of this:
    "Haiti: Mud cakes become staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family's reach" at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internationalaidanddevelopment

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chimp,
    Mud cakes? How dare you! I thought they would at least rate a fruit cake.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Most welcome, Elizabeth. Glad it touched you.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

........•SHRIEKING MACHINE•........                  •HEAD-LINES•                           •RIP•     ---(“Russian missiles blast Ukrainian military academy and hospital, killing more than 50, officials say”)---    There are no more lessons to learn here, no more beds to hold the human wounded, just missile’s shrieking their grotesque ode, The Death of Humankind! RIP, children of God…    ---(“Hundreds attend Mercer Island vigil, march for murdered Israeli hostages”)---    Dear mourners, this is the brutal vacuum of a genocidal, terror-filled, indiscriminate war-machine made of fear and we are all hostages to its deafening roar! RIP, children of God…    ---(“10-year-old allegedly confesses to fatally shooting 82-year-old man and his daughter”)---    I must confess, this is part of war’s shrieking, children lost with a we...

FAULT METER

FAULT METER    When you get a question wrong you will hear three loud beeps followed by an even louder ticking of a clock.    (Like tick-tick-tick-tick-tick?)    You are half right.    (Like tock-tock-tock-tock-tock?)    You got two halves of it.    (Then I give up!)    You do?    (It ain’t out of weakness, it’s my adhdad.) I understand.    (You understand what?)    That it’s not out of any weakness on your part.    (Weakness, on my part in what?)    Never mind, it’s definitely adhdad.     •    We float, we fly, we soar! We find our wings in each other. We find friends, cousins of the one seed of existence. An existence which never began, but always was, that loves us enough to provide life’s needs, our own, the same. A collection of living peacekeepers upon the surface of the most heavenly example known to them. • © 2017 Mark Richard Prime

Per Plex Ed

            PER+PLEX-ED When you haven’t heard the truth in so long, when you do, it rings a most familiar s ong. That’s the human song, the truth rolling out exactly when it should.      (If a truth is told and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound only to the one that spoke it?)    Yes, but our ears aren’t strong enough to hear it.     [a perplexed silence] © 2017 Mark Richard Prime