Question & Answer

Question & Answer

We are the not famous poets
We celebrate the common person

Black, Hispanic, Chinese, gay, Trans, Disabled
Senior, teenager, semi-homeless, poor, impoverished
Please excuse this poem

A poem has no right to make a dollar today
Only to celebrate the breathless holiday
Of art, the tragedies of living

The news doesn’t talk about
The violence in impoverished lands
Where billions have no enforcement of law
They talk about the privileged

It’s a state of affairs run by the entitled
Were you born in an entitled nation?
Where you have the luxury of

Talking about God or the state or art
There are human beings out there
Who if they wrote a poem it would be

About survival, about how not to be
Drowned by immigrant traffickers
Off the coast of Italy, or how

To move to a county with some semblance
Of prosperity, those would be words
Worth hearing, but how many have no voice.

Psalm 15 – The Poor

Deare God, preserve the innocent
For they have put their trust in thee
They follow nature without recourse
Thou art their Lord, so protect them

They have not harmed anyone
Their sorrows multiply from the
Minds of Men that thou created
Their inheritance is a portion of thy creation

They suffer now without need
Preserve Them, O God: for in thee
They put their last symbol of faith
They have nothing to bargain with

They cannot pay to escape chaos
They would sell their daughters to
Feed their families, with holy tears
For so little freedom is granted the poor

Therefore my heart would be glad
If you spared a few of the poor
The pure, the self-sacrificed, the down-trodden
Remember them too, while nature inherits

The wicked, the industrious, the hoarders
Those profiteers know nothing about you
God, if there is such a thing as a hell
As a punishment for sin, let it be seen

Let the Nations that do wrong be punished
And let their children bear the weight of the stain.