Filipino street children
The Gap
What for you amounts to a few miserable moments
Driving past forgotten and neglected children on the streets
Amounts to their everyday life
While you attend the recital and watch your healthy daughter turn pirouettes
Another parent struggles to remain resolute
To somehow put food on the table
Spills and stains are quickly washed from your clothing
Or you make the decision to replace the item
When the stain has set in too deeply
The poor person continues wearing the stained item
You laugh at them
Calling them a disgusting slob
On a cloudy day, you drive your beautiful, warm car through the rain
The tires splash the forgotten and neglected children
Who flutter past your window as you roll home
~Cie~
The sadness of posts like this is that the problem is barely relieved in prosperous countries, even less so in developing nations. We are so blind with full bellies. Please keep on shouting or digging us in the ribs so we are not complacent.
ReplyDeleteExcellently written, depicting opposing worlds and the vast distance between the two. - which sometimes only boils down to a tire splash.
ReplyDeletei only ask you reconsider the language of "disgusting slob" in your 4th stanza . The words don't seem to be appropriate or match the tone of the poem.. You laugh at them calling them "pitiable" or "finding them repulsive".
Randy
The words "disgusting slob" aren't mine, but rather actual words I've heard other people use to describe street people. I opt not to clean this up because it's the reality. This is truly the way people, including people who would describe themselves as "nice people," see those living in these conditions.
ReplyDeleteVery true. Kind thanks, oldegg.
ReplyDeleteAppreciate your writing which slices through our hearts but the hard to believe fact is certain places these poverty is reluctant to end though given a helping hand.
ReplyDelete#begging mafia,#misuse of reservations for poor
There is a certain attitude among people who are part of a generational line where poverty has been the norm. They tend not to trust outside help. However, this does not mean that all poor people want to remain poor and it assuredly does not mean that all poor people are lazy. Poverty is a mutifactoral problem. Take into account, for instance, the fact that a fair number of people who live in poverty are mentally ill. Certainly people who are mentally ill have been given ample reason not to trust people in authority. I speak from experience.
DeleteIt is difficult to think about the idea that, basically because of a roll of the dice, we have so much... so much we take for granted, like food every day, a warm bed, clean water... while others have so little. Especially in the holiday season, when there is an abundance of food and lights and parties and gifts, and meanwhile some people still have to worry about where they will sleep and what they will eat!
ReplyDeleteHi Cara, hope you are doing well.
ReplyDeleteI did like this take on the wordle, there is such discrepancy among the rich and the poor and actually cares.