CONFESSION ZERO

We aren't waiting for anything, not for some kind of an event when we open our refrigerator. Most of us know what we’ll find, like a recurring dream, a hazy tide of recollection, a fixed pattern, the light's fingers caressing our forehead, the lunging cower of love's duality, as if we’re enclosed in a cocoon of our own history, time, a mere distraction, not racing past or chattering or trembling when the light goes out. Deliberation’s thief, history, the vision before us, keeping our minute drained of concern, knowing what we’ll find within it when the little light comes on… © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

And the starving display their carnage through the suffocating stream of my weeping. I stroke their brow. They do not stir like a nourished child. A cherub, weary of truth, sits by the side of the road, “Will work miracles for food” reads the sign in her tiny hands. Passersby roll their eyes, “Another homeless and hungry- Get a damned job!” (Another callous human- Get a damned heart!) The road and alley and home are too filled with the starved. O! Let it rain! Let it drop a flood of love through the sun! Come rain! Come love! Descend from thy heaven, only to once more ascend, only to fall again and the starving to relinquish their carnage. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

When hunger strikes it is not as swift, it is not as jaw droppingly horrific or nearly as visual or pragmatic as when terror comes. Terror comes as a thundering blast, piercing the rust of contentment, disintegrating steely assurance- hunger slithers in. News of terror strikes fear and panic, seduces our pounding, frantic wits with darkness, dust and death devouring whatever’s left. Hunger pays no attention to time or place running our courage over our eyes with the private ghastliness of its teeth veiled in bravery’s demise. We’d recognize hunger in a crowded airport. Know it if we accidentally bumped into it and turn away from its ugly and careworn face. Terror’s not made that way. It arrives with a most thunderous shot, penetrating the crust of our indulgence, obliterating our steely assurance while hunger slithers in. Terror calls upon a nation to sacrifice, stand firm where fear imagines it’s safe, as if distance were a cushion around breathing, bravery, the call of sle...

Who for this hunger hungers for more underneath a russet sky? Stood with your thinning back turned away from mottled loss and ache with nothing to seize in your weakened hands. Gripped of emptiness, your breath and breathing to your mouth gone bitter, poison for your struggle and empty bowls placed upon prayer's wishful cart. O hunger in your scrawny temple sits with a craving carved in sorrow, who will lift your nodding head, and food bid to your beautiful lips? © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

The Three Top Sins Of The Universe On Tuesday September 11, 2001 , at least 35,615 of our brother and sisters died from the worst possible death, starvation. Somewhere around 85% of these starvation deaths occur in children 5 years of age or younger. Why are we letting at least 30,273 of the most beautiful children die the worst possible death everyday? Every 2.43 seconds another one of our fellow brothers and sisters dies of starvation. Starvation doesn't ju st happen on Tuesday September 11, 2001, it happens everyday, 365 days per year, 24 hours per day, it never stops. Terrorize me. Do not starve me. Bring terror booming. Lightening quick would be the best, I’d rather not notice than be eaten away, bent for darkness come again and again. The dead could lay at my feet curled up like kittens and I with them, contented and liberated of hunger’s fee, a wretched, agonizing, empty death beneath my flesh. Terror long before I blanch of famine, water the flower before it wilt...

They're inching near my folded arms. What am I to do? What am I to think when their dream becomes tattered, When their hope lives so near mine and mine's alive and theirs is writhing on the ground, young and old, emptied of food for consideration, stretched out, ready to stiffen of winter's march? O! The growl will not lessen! The din of barrenness augments its dreadful noise! I know the thrum striking at madness- the thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, it shakes the refrain of humankind. These hungry sounds are moving upon my back. Hunger stands open-mouthed at my feet. Will I deny it, unbelieving in my own, my own hunger licking at my toes? I wake to the noise. Shudder. Believe. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

When they removed the last bandage from Hunger the crowd gasped, Hunger had, ironically enough, been eaten away almost to nothing by the hungry. there was nothing left now but a grave dug with joy. Hunger had spent too many years eating away at flesh, too much time roaming the world on ravenous, weary-born legs and was not able to defend itself against its rapacious spawn. Too many years having its way with the needy and unsuspecting masses, Hunger had finally come upon itself. Too many years had passed since it knew how to defend its realm, trekking over the deserts and snow and oceans and sidewalks and roads without a worry or a care in this world of who it touched, it would walk over a hundred Mountains to get to one child, standing open-mouthed at Hunger’s monstrous breadth. Yes. Innocent children and their mothers and fathers happily tore away Hunger’s flesh with their weary worn claws made of the stiffened air and untold bereavement. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman