I was a hitchhiker
Depending on the free ride
To get my education
In a home
Where need
Smothered hope
You become my sponsor
My twelve step program
To break the habit
Of poverty
You, yourself
Recovering from a childhood
Of want
And you were always
With me
Hearing my confessions
Bolstering my confidence
Appreciating the uphill climb
I faced
And I learned
Becoming a sponsor myself
Passing on lessons
My voice
Strengthened
By your example
At street number 35
In Lawson’s bay colony
There’s a rich boy
Enjoying sumptuous cuisines with
His friends and relatives
Having a barbecue,
Italian pasta, spaghetti with
Prawns and chilli, butter chicken,
Pancakes and orange juice.
Everybody is flooded with euphoria.
A look of ecstasy on their faces
Reminds me of the cornucopia of pleasures
I’ve enjoyed in my life
And then there’s a poor boy
Living on the roads
Of the same colony
Not like the pauper
In the famous novel
The Prince and the Pauper
By Mark Twain
Rather in tattered clothes
With innocent looks and emaciated
In the throes of bitter childhood
Eating their leftovers
From the dustbin
His hunger reminds me
Of the situations when
I really felt helpless
And had no choice.
But to all of us
It’s a reminder of
Our poverty-stricken nation
Our bad habit of
Throwing food away
Forgetting that it can satiate
The appetite of the destitute children
It’s a reminder of our obligation
To eradicate poverty by
Serving the underprivileged.
It’s universal just like hate
We’re plagued with what is right
Versus what is wrong
Media tells us;
What to believe
Yet what is love?
It’s a complex mystery.
We need more love
Less hate.
You always tell me: you are incredibly idealistic
when you love all people equally, trees and flowers, animals,
without concealing them with the cloak of inequality,
when you are admiring what it is worthy of praises,
without the worm of jealousy eating you whole,
when you do not harm anybody
and the waves of evil do not immerse you,
when you understand every being,
even if you, for this fact, are enigmatic,
when you help anyone from the kindness of your heart
without expecting something in return,
when you consider money have no value
and the wisps of greed never daze you,
when you always forgive
without the boulder of vengeance shattering you in pieces,
when you introduce yourself to people the way you truly are,
without performing on the stage of life as a perfect actor,
when you truly are faithful
without the arrows of evil, greed and deception piercing you…
In a dream I saw a man in Dachau
give his last morsel of bread
to one he thought was suffering more.
I heard his thoughts.
“I am no mere plaything of circumstance.
They can take my life but not
the freedom to choose my way.”
I rushed to tell my friends
that choice determines who we are,
proof sufficient being in Dachau
a man chose compassion over self.
One friend replied:
“Noble indeed is such a one.
Heroes make these choices.
The exception though is not the rule.
Choice is circumscribed by circumstance
and eliminated for most by horror of place.”
Another then spoke:
“Oppression’s boot can find the weight
To crush all choice away.
Was that man’s compassion an act of choice?
I rather think it a gift of grace.”
The man from Dachau then appeared
to confirm my friends were right.
“The parade”, he said, “is unendingly long
of those who shuffle by –
starving children, women beaten,
the tortured, guiltless and cruelly oppressed,
the dispossessed, the mind manacled,
the legions of the poor.
I merely do what I must do.
Those who can, should follow.”
More at http://windofflowers.blogspot.com.au.
Never mind the din the chaos
Cars doing cat walks on rabid pavements breeding ground for flies and men
Never mind them
simply mind the beggar whose begging bowl is as empty as his stomach of the rickety boy standing next to him.
Maybe we can afford a hunger strike.
There is justice in a corner
revelry in another
but poverty comes up
and walks away with both.
So you justice seekers
find poverty, give it some respite.
Nothing
so kind
as a word
tucked in
the right
spot
like a
fine
pillow.
Three travellers, meeting on the mountain-side,
paused to speak briefly, each to each.
Said the first:
I seek the mountain’s distant height,
the mighty summit’s peak,
beyond the struggle and fray,
the endless lies, the dark deceit,
the never-ending thump of guns,
the bigotry, prejudice and conceit,
O high, so high above
the plain’s violent stagnation
I seek a vision and a dream
and in desperation flee
from oppressive humanity.
The second replied:
This ledge is sufficient for me.
I have long stayed observing here
and I delight to see
the curious scurrying and strife
on the distant plain below,
the march of armies, the boom of guns,
the inevitable ebb and flow,
and when this ceases to delight
then I raise my eyes up to the sky’s
interplay of colour and light
or wrap myself in velvet night.
The third said:
I have walked to the summit
and now return to the plain,
though the armies plunder
and the rapacious growl for gain.
I have heard the orphan’s cry,
the widow’s sorrowing groan,
the homeless sigh,
the wounded moan.
I descend, taking what I can,
gifts ever so slight and small,
touch soft and gentle like a kiss,
words as kind as healing balm
and empathy that is palm to palm.
They sit in corners
Barely out of sight
While the rest of us
Try not to know their names
Though we do
Memorized because they
Are us.