Die from mortal wounds
Or die from starvation

Die the death of debt

Which doctor
Is not a witch doctor?
Surgery on your security
Held at knifepoint,
Savor the scalpel of rich robbers

The nurse
Is a curse
To your purse

Drown in blood
Or drown in bills

The Hypocritical Oath prevails

Dread the eruption of poor patience.

Why do you deserve what you have
And more?

While the man outside begging
For his life
Deserves what he has
And nothing more

they've been eating cake
take their cake away
let them eat hunger
the upper classes
crave apocalypse
and speak of revolution
as a desirable inevitability
but lay the burden
of building the guillotine
upon the poor
while denying them access
to the forest
and the wood that grows there
the mythic poor
are urged to eat the rich
the mythic rich
the rich that are richer
than the rich who dream
these dreams
if you want us
to eat the rich
invite us into the homes
of your parents
and let us sit at your
christmas dinner
and eat your food
and serve up the horror
of our presence
the good book says
charity begins at home
let us eat you

The dinner guests have all agreed:
"Why yes, we love the poor;
The softened little sunken eyes-
What's there not to adore?
The way they dress in raw distress
It's flaunted like Dior-
For heaven's sake, there's lots of steak
Who's for a little more?"

Now that the meal is over
The subject's come and passed
The dinner guests compare their crests
Sat smugly on their ***
Now that the sun is setting
The poor rise from the streets
It's time to stumble round again
And scrounge some food to eat.

POVERTY AS A POEM

To use a statistic to describe poverty
is to turn a human being into a number,
the moral antithesis of compassion.

Yet The World Bank, The International
Monetary Fund, The United Nations
all use statistics when talking and writing
about poverty.

Nazis turned human beings into numbers
by using indelible ink when they wrote them
on the arms of those they soon were to ****.

One human being in poverty on Earth is
one too many.

My nouns and adjectives are different:
starvation, hopelessness, illnesses,
slums, violence, death.

There are over 2,800 billionaires in the
world right now.

How much has each given to end world
poverty? How many of them have held
in his or her arms the body of a child
who has died of poverty?

Not enough, not nearly enough.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

you've heard about the rose,
that grew from concrete,
it learned to walk,
without having feet.

funny it seems,
we forget about the rose who,
never got the chance,
to keep his dreams.
or a chance to
breathe free.
like the rose who succumbed underneath
all of life's adversities.
like the rose who was shot,
by a force of unjust police.
or the rose who fell victim
to generational poverty.
or the rose who was born with a
serious disability.
or the rose who came from a
long line of broken families.
or the rose who felt the effects
everyday of inequality.
making it harder for him
to spread his great leaves.

lets not forget,
about the rose who couldn't,
rise and beat the concrete,
and whose body lies underneath the concrete,
lets not forget
about the rose who couldn't rise from a crack between,
the concrete.

As they face another wall
my eyes are in a river
and my face a waterfall
I see children begging
in the street
I hear their hearts
can you feel the heat
a penny for your thoughts
please embrace the need
and attend to the beat