Blank faces, hopeless dreams
Scattered down the boulevard
Thank the barren local streets
That shatter thoughts of working hard

Lonely moms, dying friends,
Barefoot children in the dark
Play behind a chain-link fence
Instead of in the park

Fast food & news stations
Feed on troubled minds
Claiming that the stipulations
Are changing with the times

These days you can’t wake up
Without that cup of Joe
Problems all those drugs shake up
Most people never know

Though in dexterity my  physically challenged  carpenter father,
Than  the physically fit proves better,as a source to his anger,
With contemporaries a level ground  he enjoyed never!

From late childhood there was one thing that me used to bother,  why my so discriminated father
On his turn true to cultural dictates,ill treats my domestic chores saddled mother
And heeds not her say though by the sweat of their brow
As responsible parents they were happily bringing my sister and I together?

I still wonder why ,why ,why my sister who has IQ
On par with me if not better,to help out mother
Suffering a cold shoulder even by her mom was denied the  right to pursue education further
While I was given a chance to prove a man of letter(s)?

I remember, crossing many a pool, barefooted, I used to trek
A long distance to a nearby town's a  school,
Where for my  provincial and shabby clothes I was seen a fool
By the relatively rich  in showing courtesy far from cool.
Though stationery they didn't lack , sad,I had a hand tied behind my back.

Alas,up on joining campus where I yearned for the sagacious a chance
There too  in my class,I was looked down by students
Hailing from families of the top brass.

When I went abroad for a higher education enjoying fellowship and donation
Worse still, I met many, colour has coloured whose vision.
Ironically my dissertation was drawing attention
To why should the broad mass be standers by
And with ill-fate marked die
While the favoured ,racist and the corrupt few gobble over 3/4 of the pie? /

Tell me again how to fit
Into the gaps of society
Designated for a woman.
Tell me all the ways my words
Are less my own
Than they are a man's
Tell me how my body will always be
Questioned
The cup in my hand
An excuse.
Remind me of all the ways
Today will never be my day.

Human directives, veracities unverified  
Bellies belching with anger, murderers
Udders dripping hate, foundling banters
Hunters striking the hungered, unfortunate
Glare sight to seek the truth, hold me lets sink
Tear motions and debates of inequality

My Dafur, the realm of the fur, demise
All armed in Sudan, the arid, a battlefield
Emergency alarms sirens from 2003
The indefinite complications and hunger
A land of the displaced, starving nomads
Hear me out in these non-dissolving conflicts

Guantanamo bay detention a prison vicious
A base for “war in terrorism”, reciprocal laws
Inhumane human interrogations persists
A breach, a revolt, the hunger riots devolve
Force-feeding, torturous measures applied
All undressed, humiliated, genitalia exposed

A Rwanda slain in divide and rule
Civil clashes, mashes, all trashed
Swaying war rapes, tapes, the raves
Machetes slashing necks and hands
A lust of power, a genocide slaughter
The Tutsi slewed and unsewn from a patch

Autocratic regime boring divisions
Territorial ethnic cleansing, a holocaust
The oppression of Jews, Romanis, Poles
Homosexuals, the disabled and mentally ill
Indifference pooled in pits and camps
The institutional social indoctrination

The honor and killing to expose shame
The violation and dishonor of moral fabric
For what is “good”, “bad”, fixated moral values
Buried waists and head, awaiting stones to hit
Confessional secrets of only what lays within
A torment watching witnesses, all dangling

Marxists calls ships to stow ashore
Masses kidnapped, confused in deceit
Invalid contracts awaits signatures
The white immigrants to be enslaved
All aboard, now abroad to revolve labor
Wage packages taken to pay for freedom

Humans bought and sold to be owned
Slaves yorked and counted as assets
Bounded to serve plantations and homes
A human, non human, a chattel, a slave
A debt *******, offended and *****
Untamed and made to obey a master

A falling global strings unturned
Tunes strumming hate, war and pain
Human trafficking, violence, inequality
Child abuse, civil conflicts, capitalists
Commercialism, zero hour contracts
For if we have no rights, I have none
For if we have no peace I have none

Jingle, jingle, Mr. Kringle
Please drop by my house.
Don’t miss it like you did last year
Don’t be that seasonal louse
That brought cheesy kinds of toys
From the local dollar store
We shopped there all the time
So we had seen them before.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful
But Action Tommy is not the same
As GI Joe. Between the two there’s
More difference than the name.
And Lego blocks fit together
To build some amazing things
Those copycat toys from Taiwan
Do not build much of anything.

Jingle, Jingle, Mr. Kringle
If you are real, please heed.
None of those toys and junk
Is really what we need.
It would be better if you could
Bring a job for my poor Dad.
Make it better than minimum, like
The one he most recently had.

And maybe a raise for Mom
Who works a full time job too.
Would a dollar an hour be such
An earth-shaking thing to see to?
So, just in general, Kringle dude,
If it wouldn’t make you awful mad
Could you twitch your nose and
Make this Christmas not be sad?

kind of in awe of
you Life is this ball of
rolling momentum
too and why not stop
and smell the roses

making wind chimes
from hard knocks
a city rose on a
dilapidated block  I
draw the moisture from
the heir She pulls jewels
out of coal mines like me

born on third but feels like home
Didn't even have to hit it
the path was      well    
warm   and        well      lit
but no one reads any more
So the bitter is lost on the sweet

in love but yet not
In love the brush strokes are
small slow whispers of friction
the distinction comes in step
ping a way through the
looking glass
Now I cherish the clasp
She lives in my lap

realizing that I love her