Poverty…

Maybe I am slow, but I do not understand, I don’t know,

How, in a country as rich in everything, as is the United States?

How do we have poverty, let alone how do we permit it?

I find myself low on food every now and then sure, but I am not starving,

How do we allow children, in THIS COUNTRY, to starve on a daily basis?

These children are not in some foreign land, of pestilence and disease,

Flies flittering about their faces, living in their own feces,

These are children born and bred within our shores, Americans by birth,

When we all have so much that we throw out some food as it has gone bad,

How can we allow little children to not eat, not drink fresh water, this is so very sad!

What can we do, I want to donate all I have to a family in need,

Leaving me with nothing, I don’t think that would be so very bad,

I do work, I do live, I do eat too much if you look at me, I also do bleed,

For these little waifs, these children of poverty, hunger in their eyes,

Nothing in their tummies, always crying for food, always trying to better their mood…

I cannot write anymore of this travesty,

We go to war for oil, we go to war for money, and we fight for freedom, supposedly,

Freedom to starve in a country so rich in all that it needs,

People with full refrigerators, complaining they have not a thing to eat,

Cupboards full with canned and boxed goods, plenty to feed a family of eight,

But to hear the kids, they have nothing to eat, they want snacks, they want junk…

They need to experience hunger just once; they need to live in poverty the same,

Never again will you hear their whining, their incessant complaining, hopefully…

              © ed – 3/22/04