Tag Archives: poems about inequality.

Stating the Obvious

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Stating the Obvious

We’ve hit a cosmic bottleneck and every day I rue it,
for I have the feeling that we will not make it through it.
They’ve indexed the world’s problems, but knowing that they’re there
seems to do very little in solving the nightmare.

We do not yield to pressure to try to cure the ills.
We only seem to kneel before the moneyed class’s wills.
We temper fear with hope that someone else will solve the puzzle
of the fact the whole damn world is staring down a muzzle.

Kids shoot other kids with guns but adults do not care
so long as the NRA sanctions the warfare.
We ban those from our borders who clean up all our messes,
then wonder why we’re drowning here in our own excesses.

Amazon sells refreshments as we all just sit and watch
as climate change keeps shifting the danger up a notch.
Meanwhile, the rich get richer and we ignore the poor
as the ones who need it least acquire more and more.

The polar caps are melting as California burns,
and in between, the drought and floods keep on taking turns.
Hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones mount and mount,
raising the fatalities higher than we can count.

Nobody knows the answer for how to please us all,
yet we forget we all are one on this great blue ball.
If only we could find a way to even out the score
and give up some of what we’ve got so others can have more.

Sacrifice fossil fuel to give the world a chance.
Tear down the oil derricks. Replace them with plants.
Make sure the rich pay taxes on a par with all the rest.
Admit that we don’t own the Earth. We are just its guest!!!

 

Prompts today are temper, index, cosmic, bottleneck, kneel and refreshments.

Balance

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“Too much happiness or too much unhappiness render us
oblivious to any good or bad changes around us.” 
—Alka Girdhar

 Balance

Happiness, like sadness, takes up too much room–
like a greedy house guest usurping our closets with their excess.
What bride notices the homeless on her bridal route?
What new mother thinks first of the starving hidden half a world away?

Sadness, like happiness, eats up our world.
The hungry yearn first for bread,
the ill for surcease from pain.
Who feels the thorn may overlook the rose.

Life is balanced, not within each,
but within the all.
What seems unfair to the single eye
is perfect harmony for the all-seeing.

So much easier
for the fortunate to feel worthy of their lot.
to feel, somehow, that their place in the  world
was created just for them.

Do the cursed feel equally singled out for hunger, cold, pestilence and misery?
Does a master mason have an intended place for every stone?
Does a baker single out a single speck of flour for inclusion?
Is a bee instilled with life to pollinate a certain flower?

What kind consciousness could have borne the guilt
of thinking through a plan more specific than the overplan–
the functioning of the grand machine of the universe
wherein happiness and sadness
swing like a pendulum
that somehow balances all.

The writer who provided the quote that prompted this poem has also written an article about Abdul Kalam  that you can find HERE. The link to the article the above quote was in can be found by clicking on her name above. We would both be interested in what others might write in response to this prompt. If you do, please send a link to both of us!  We want to know what you think.