#famine
I would pray,
But he's probably too busy,
Killing people
Tearing families apart
Spreading diseases
Watching children starve
He's too focused on his reality TV,
That's our reality.
He can't be bothered to listen,
To that teenagers cry for help,
As they beg for a reason
Not to
End it all
He doesn't have time to hear about,
Your pancreatic cancer
It's in operable?
Not. His. Problem.
You devoted your life to worship?
Too. **** Bad.
See,
I would pray for,
Peace
Or
Mercy
But he's too invested in his,
Little old game.
Apr 29
Apr 29, 2026 at 11:44 PM UTC
I am Irish American,
not because borders claim me,
but because history tried
to erase me—
and failed.
My pride was not born
green, white, and orange.
It was unearthed
from the annals of history
after adoption buried my ancestry,
turning surnames into ghosts,
insisting I looked more Swedish,
more German, more British
than Irish.
I was not handed my history.
I had to excavate it from
fragments,
paper trails,
and DNA.
They tried to bury not only me,
but my foremothers,
who struggled
so I could one day breathe.
My Irish pride began
in the untamed wilds
of an island where pagans ran free,
worshipping gods older than Rome’s hunger,
older than the saints
they would soon teach
to speak
in the language of Celts.
My Irish pride was forged
in the wake of an unyielding English crown,
who learned how to starve an entire country
using a deadly famine,
while teaching the world
to call it weather.
The crown exported what was left
to feed their own,
leaving my kin to die on the road,
starving,
grass staining their tongues.
My Irish pride was carried
by a single woman
who braved the unkind sea
aboard a coffin ship,
lungs full of salt and grief,
arriving in a New World
that called her animal,
called her expendable,
called her less than human—
but still demanded her labor.
She lived anyway.
So do I.
My pride is not undone
by oceans,
or by the accidents of birth.
Blood remembers
what borders can't erase.
I carry Ireland
the way survivors carry fire—
not loudly,
not decoratively,
but relentlessly.
I may never touch her soil.
I may never walk where my foremothers bled.
But she lives in my refusal,
in my remembering,
in my anger
that lives in the DNA
passed from mother to child.
This pride was not just inherited.
It was reforged.
Jan 15
Jan 15, 2026 at 6:13 PM UTC
There lies a land behind the smoke,
Where silence screams and hearts are broke
Where lullabies drown in bombs and drones
And cradles turn to shattered stones
Babies cry with lips so dry
No blood, no milk, no tear left to cry
No schoolbell rings, no hospital stands,
Just bones and ruins buried in the sand
They queue for crumbs and bleed for rice
A bottle of water, the price of life
Each has lost __ be it a child or spouse
a parent, a sibling or a shattered house
Then phosphorus rains on wrecked-out souls
To burn their skin to elevate their pains
And we the modern civilized race
Watch stage 5 famine take its place
What further war-crimes must I define
Palestine bleeds while the world stays blind
______________________
Paghunda Zahid
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 2:19 PM UTC
No more bicycles:
with the tram
No more trams:
on roller skates
until they break
On clogs
until raids close everything
No more electricity
No more candles
No more stolen oil
No more charcoal
No more trees
No more books
only the clothes on one's back
No more bread:
grinding wheat
in the coffee grinder
No more wheat:
cooking rye grains
No more rye:
begging tours
No more winter coats:
worn coats made of blankets
curtains on the beds
A cold house, hunger
and fear, and time
that stands still
at hope
Jun 29, 2025
Jun 29, 2025 at 3:10 AM UTC
they break
what they can't buy
where i own it
the land
the deed
the deeds
the first meeting
a hand, gently, cupping her hip
i remember her
in ways she doesn't
in ways impossible
the flutter of her eyelashes
taken aback, then
softly
as a feather fall
drooping of her eyelids
curving of her lips
every moment from then
till mine, slipping off
her emerald slippers
as she groped her chest
soft panting
anticipating
no breath was there for fear
only for joy, and weeping for pleasure
but i was not there
i was already here
in mourning
for who could cherish a night so sweet
forever
surely i,
i tell you,
for i am ever there
in the midst of every meeting, i am absent
stolen away
by love's first embrace
in the coffin
in the death of life, to love, i slumber
for the sun of onus
debt to what tills the earth
i till it not
for i shall never be he who makes her
wait
till
later
i till the day, au revoir
to distant lands, yonder, seek my morrow
seek my yesterday
but today, i'm with her,
as if with child
as if burdened by an impossible future
by myriad questions,
chemistry, timetables, passports, important dates
we are alchemists
she and i,
abed
amidst the dread of toil and bore,
we are parched of pleasure
we seek it,
it is
no one else's
but ours
we mine it
between fear and flight
we fight time and being
we fight ourselves
we fight the womb, what is without that which is opportune,
the midst of our seeking
farming her waistlands
for diamonds, for oases, for meadows, for flowers unbloomed,
i sought her mind for love
attempted
she denied me
pressed her thumb to my lips
said every word i never dared dream
a woman'd say
and still
ever more she spoke
and i was entranced
enraptured
askance at how
my mind
my bark encrusted body
came alive
with her grace, healing the rigor mortis
of ages past
suppleness of time, unwound in length
now newly wound in electrifying sight
awoke me
alighting the sinews of my brain
with wisdom, truth, and recognition of the life before me
truly alive, and wanting of me, from marrow to end,
and all at once
by ken i learned, how
barren
the world was
without her
despite her, even,
as, i thought, surely i had known charm, before her...
surely, i had known truth, and victory, and love, before...
nay,
i knew,
naught was i in keeping of any bauble the world trifles
in one's company,
with prices aplenty,
all to conjure the mystery, majesty, misery, and deceit of value,
only
should one glean the truth,
to sup of the waters
of love and its dew
to be there
at the hip
and taste of the river
from forefathers and ancient mothers,
from maidens and warlords
from kings and queens,
they all passed down their sweat of brow
the blood of swords and season's flow
to have us know
all for us
this was done
and you all
waste it
tirelessly
merely
talking about love
while,
i
dream it
eat of it
live it
enjoy it...
why not you?
Jan 30, 2025
Jan 30, 2025 at 8:09 PM UTC
kick rocks, use my pedals to find peace
pluck them petals and repeat
my routine engraved, my days are grey
my actions are too discreet
i crave the sunlight but worry of burns
i summon the rain but fear for the worst
floods, hurricanes, eternal monsoon
drought, famine, no more breaking news
Aug 31, 2023
Aug 31, 2023 at 10:46 AM UTC
~
*The name on my lips
is a prophecy
An unsustainable breath of life
It sparks revolutions
both for and against
To say it is to pray it
in a word, a phrase, a life sentence
And it lies scattered on the beach
Put your ear to a seashell
and listen
Listen for the sound of terrible canyons of static
Of plastic birds
decomposing trees
Things we lost in the fire
Listen for the starvation tapes
For the voice of people who eat darkness
and make big fires out every little syllable
Listen for the work of reformatting spiders
spinning social webs to burden and ensnare
naïve reckless hearts
Listen for the heartless aftermath
and the building blocks of sheer madness
Listen for the sound of weeping
at the memory of peace*
~
Feb 5, 2023
Feb 5, 2023 at 10:27 PM UTC
Take your Seven Deadly Sins,
And butcher them with punctuation.
Capitalize on floods, famines and fires.
Express sickness, war and homelessness.
Parse politics.
Syllabicate and spell out for all to read
The horror of homelessness and apathy.
There.
Nothing's too real we can't fictionalize... marginalize,
Again, and again, and again.
Apr 7, 2021
Apr 7, 2021 at 10:24 AM UTC
You deserve no pity for it was done in earnest;
Declaring innocence’s a consolation at best;
Like us all through mortality you were put to the test;
Carelessness’ a testimony upon which you now may rest.
Against famine you took the lead by unsheathing the sword,
Spilling blood amidst the pleads without believing the word.
Our tribunal for this affair will have your future sealed;
The trial may not seem fair, but so never were your deeds.
Jan 1, 2021
Jan 1, 2021 at 4:56 PM UTC
bloated by famine in Ethiopia
the stomach must now digest
a TV commercial
of delicious cat food
cholesterol free
Sep 5, 2020
Sep 5, 2020 at 8:38 PM UTC
Harvest be gone
Welcome to starvation
Ruins of Babylon
Maypole rivets for fangs
Parse the tricky argot, Mr. Bugbear
You speak such pretty thangs
Adagio for strings
Cry me a mare
Thundering rockets of pain
Life is a factory of scares
Jun 29, 2020
Jun 29, 2020 at 12:23 PM UTC
A mother sits on the edge
of a hospital bed with her
baby daughter lying on her lap.
The air throughout the hospital
is suffocating, stifling with the
stench of filth and death.
The walls amplify and echo the
anguish of women and children,
and jets fly somewhere overhead.
But she tries to sing a lullaby
through her parched throat
beneath her grubby niqāb. The skin
and bones that make her frame
cannot sway the child for comfort.
She cannot feed her; even if her
******* could provide sustenance,
the child’s sickness would puke it
back up. She craves to cry for God
to spare her little one, but her
bloodshot, sunken eyes no longer
produce tears. All she can offer is
her lullaby, the same one she sang
to all her children. All that remains
of them and their father are fragments,
scattered throughout dirt and debris,
blown to bits a week ago by a blast
in her village. When the only one left
became sick, she started the trek to
the nearest hospital. The journey
greeted her with dust and unbearable
heat, with the agony of an empty
stomach, with a child in misery and
excreting white diarrhea. And when
she finally reached the hospital, the
doctors could not provide treatment.
The disease had progressed too far,
and they did not have the means to
save her daughter. So she sits on a
hospice bed, surrounded by other
sickly and starving bodies, singing a
lullaby. Soon the child closes her eyes
and stops breathing, a thick white
drool leaking down her cheek. Her
mother wipes it away.
-
by Aleksander Mielnikow (Alek the Poet)
Jun 13, 2020
Jun 13, 2020 at 6:00 PM UTC
The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch
“I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves [of 30,000 Irish men, women and children], and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there.” – Paddy Maloney of The Chieftans
There was relief there,
and release,
on Île Grosse
in the spreading gorse
and the cry of the wild geese . . .
There was relief there,
without remorse
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.
And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.
When ravenous famine set all her demons loose,
driving men to the seas like lemmings,
they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death,
and their belief in God gave them hope, a sense of peace.
These were proud men with only their lives to owe,
who sought the liberation of a strange new land.
Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row,
with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand.
And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory,
reflects the death of sunlight on their story.
And their tale is sad—but, O, their faith was grand!
Keywords/Tags: Ile Grosse, Celtic, Cross, faith, belief, grief, Ireland, potato, famine
Apr 18, 2020
Apr 18, 2020 at 2:46 AM UTC
Neglect
by Michael R. Burch
What good are tears?
Will they spare the dying their anguish?
What use, our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?
What good, the warm benevolence of tears
without action?
What help, the eloquence of prayers,
or a pleasant benediction?
Before this day is over,
how many more will die
with bellies swollen, emaciate limbs,
and eyes too parched to cry?
I fear for our souls
as I hear the faint lament
of theirs departing ...
mournful, and distant.
How pitiful our “effort,”
yet how fatal its effect.
If they died, then surely we killed them,
if only with neglect.
Keywords/Tags: neglect, starving, dying, perishing, famine, illness, disease, tears, anguish, concern, prayers, inaction, death
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 9:39 PM UTC
You visited Darkness on my doorstep
A maelstrom of madness behind a cracked clown's mask
Your rictus grin cast shadows on my house guests
An upheaval of war broke out at gentile dinner party
Your heavy booted footsteps echoed in the antechamber
As you strode so confident into cacophonious dinner
Laying hands on hors d'eouvres and rotting sweet flesh
Forcing famine to descend on friendly folk
You played with the delicacy of human frailty
As you coughed with hollow wet echoes, racking paper lungs
Spreading filth and vile pox from woman to man
A sickly green pestilence wrapped tendrils around them all
And lastly, you stood before me brandishing gloved finger
You pointed at my chest and asked me, "Are you ready?"
The delight you took from all this rancor, truly sickening
You visited death upon my dining table with glee
But death won't get what it wants on this cold day
Not with heavy heeled boots of war, nor from feast to famine
Not with the pox of pestilence, no horse will drag me away
You came bearing darkness my friend,
But in a quiet valediction, I shall have to ask you to leave
Feb 26, 2020
Feb 26, 2020 at 6:02 PM UTC
The struggle is real
The world is on fire,
And everyone is a liar
The struggle is real
There is temptation and sin around every corner
I swear it is torture
The struggle is real
People are drawn in and dragged down
As everyone has a nervous breakdown
The struggle is real
War, famine, and death abound
And the wire around the world's neck is tightly wound
The struggle is real
I have seen so much pain
It has been seared into my brain
The struggle is real
The world is dying
And everyone is crying
The struggle is real
The world is on fire,
And everyone is a liar
Nov 4, 2019
Nov 4, 2019 at 12:51 PM UTC
almost caught around cold marble corners,
stealing strawberries
never noticed by the common crowds,
painfully singled out by the mobs
snatching frozen kisses through double sided mirros,
make me look conceded
silver moments savored by golden windows,
showing worlds who never cared
wondering why we are labeled as villain,
they are the crude smokes that filling ****** skies
contaminated by pleas of those who perspire over you,
fall me upon silent ears
slink around in dark damp under-secret tunnels,
intials engraved within an immature heart pressured into perfection by natural issues
pollution, famine, war, death
four horsmen ready to ride unto an unforgiving world,
but i am the best
the horsemen can never outrun me
i'll always be just behind the almost-loyal congregations, lying in wait amongst the shadows not cowering,
waiting for their side effects to set in
it never takes long
for the noble steeds stomp upon my seeds of doubt,
pressing them firmly in with blood, sweat and tears
first, little sprouts, then large blinding leaves and rolling suffocating vines with poison thorns
don't ***** yourselves children, the fear will set in
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 11:05 PM UTC
and what you need
to realize
is that
the flowers growing
on the tips
of someone else's pen
is not
the wilting of yours.
Jul 22, 2019
Jul 22, 2019 at 11:54 PM UTC
I am living at Death's door\
I wanted to live some more\
That is why I never passed to beyond\
And now I'm a wanderer at this hour\
I am killing at War's front\
Against my willon this manhunt\
I wanted more from this life\
And now I'm a murderer and shunned\
I am eating at Famine's dining room\
With a hunger that leads me to ruin\
I want more to eat, all I am is gluttony\
And now all I do is consume\
I have Pestilence at my core\
Anyone I touch sickens, more and more\
I didn't want this for anyone, not me\
And now I caused this horror\
Out of control, I'm not me\
An apocalyptic creature, a zombie\
Created to **** and leaved the world free\
Of this curse that is known as Humanity\
Jun 15, 2019
Jun 15, 2019 at 8:13 AM UTC