Cutting all
The lifelines.
Boats set adrift,
Heading toward nowhere.
A roiling sea
Gulping them whole.
You’re on your own
In this world.
Don’t expect us
To help you.
Sad spiraling
Plunge to the bottom.
Made to feel
Exceedingly small,
Unimportant,
An afterthought,
In his formative years.
Dominated, controlled,
Berated, violated.
Left to fend for himself
Without any sense
Of direction,
Set loose
With jagged protrusions
That slash the
People he comes
In contact with.
With a shrug of
His shoulders he
Says that there
Will always be poverty,
And, unknowingly, with
That one pronouncement,
Millions, billions, of
People are relegated to
Being poor, simply
Because this one
Woefully misinformed person
And everyone like him,
Have bought into the lie that
It has to be this way.
At some level,
No doubt buried in
The deepest recesses
Of his psyche,
He realizes the words
Coming out of his mouth
Are hurtful.
Cold indifference,
All-consuming fear,
Learned at the
Receiving end of
Harsh punishment,
Propagated without
Conscious thought.
Erudite clique meets
To devise the latest
Brilliant plan.
On the agenda:
Relentlessly eliminate
Critical programs.
Austere measures
Imposed regardless
Of outcomes.
Steady diet of
Scarcity,
Starvation.
Hobble it
Until it can’t
Do anything.
Such a lovely family portrait,
Grandfather and Grandmother
With their arms around their
Beloved grandchildren,
Smiles beaming but not
Luminously enough to mask
What the family business
Does to human beings,
Darkness behind pretense.
An arrangement where we
Have no choice but
To conform to survive,
Think of ourselves
In terms of a group,
Embrace tribalism,
Accept dysfunction
As normal,
Our view of ourselves
Filtered through the
Unmet needs of others,
Expected to
Perpetuate the debacle
Or be cast out.
They walk into the place
For the first time in
Many years, expecting the
Same feelings to wash
Over them: youth, excitement,
Spontaneity, life in
Bloom and effervescence;
They quickly realize you
Can’t recreate what was
Once there, and locales
Like this only welcome
You once before moving on.
Walking down the street
On the way to the store
One fine summer day,
He encounters an older
Woman who looks at him
With dread and hastily
Moves away from him
As he wonders what
Just happened, later
Realizing it was what
It has always been.
