Picking up tears
from cobbled streets
and hutments,
the road
winds to a “slum”
crows pecking at garbage
is there blood anywhere?
children gather leftovers
food, bottles, beer cans
children of the street
school is no happening
and we teachers, we learn.
In hutments we see in equal measure humanity
betrothed to pangs
of hunger. The wind blows
the roof whistling an augury
hard to comprehend.
Little children in shades
of blue, weep forgetting
the toys they left
in heaps of garbage.
Let’s wind up
Let’s regress
I don’t like the state
The way it is
I have no voice
Or one I don’t use
I think for myself
When they tell me to
The great freedom
Hangs just in front
Of the crowd whose
Hands won’t snatch it.
In huts boiled rice
a family sits
with expectation
especially the children
tearing scraps of paper
biting, eating
and a country moves on
with railway tracks
and trains entering
passengers witness
to seething darkness
it does not matter
what you eat
it matters why you eat
as economists and sociologists define the poverty of experience
inexperience
paucity of love.
In Myanmar they took over
not by blood, getting rid
of stained hands and feet
took over by imprisoning
prison and gun shots
where in the past manacles
and fists threatened to kill
in the first instance
where opposing this meant
cold doors and corridors
where simply saying no
was heresy
but triumph comes in different measures through
a box where people in chorus can say “Out”.
In Myanmar the gutsy storm replaced fresh breath
of the wind, where no
had to say: yes.