The boy with the bloated stomach

I was thinking about the world and how unfair it is today… how something as simple as the place you happen to be born can define your entire life, and how some mistakenly take chance and luck for entitlement and ownership. A poem I wrote in 2013 came to mind which reflects upon the disconnect and guilt that results from what are now somewhat jokingly known as “first world problems”….

 

The boy with the bloated stomach, 2013

“Don’t think about that,

we are of a different life,

We don’t deal with the same daily strife,

You’ll go crazy questioning how many lives you could save”

my tap effortlessly bursts with water.

“You can’t control it,

we can’t save the world”

I will Get another house, move up the property ladder yes?

As the boy with the bloated stomach wonders why he wasn’t blessed,

His little sister died before his eyes a few sleeps ago,

he’s lost tracks of the hours and days

He lies there in eternal pain,

gathering my deposit, complaining of my systems taxing,

While the boy with the bloated stomach would see tomorrow with a vaccine,

He likens his being to swimming against the tide,

the waters heavy, air and energy precious, searching the dark with eyes open wide

“Stop thinking of them, look at the new phone thats come out”,

While his lips crackle and blister at the height of the drought

“Stop thinking of them, switch on the tv”,

But whispering inside tells me he could be me

The boy with the bloated stomach grows weaker by the hour,

whilst my companion beside me complains her food is too sour.

The Celestial beings come before him,

muffling voices drifting to the distance,

initially he fights it but loses his persistence.

Questions if he wants to stay in the camp where he watches his mother cry and pray,

does he want to go on,

suffer another day?

The charities were going to help him survive,

But the boy with the bloated stomach no longer wants this life.

I sign the dotted line,

a blank expression encompasses my face,

I feel an unassingable  emotion somewhere deep within,

As the boy with the bloated stomach draws his final breaths in, the death rattle sounds,

the blood refuses to circulate, pupils dilate.

i review my interest rate.

Swimming is suddenly easy for him,

Floating in a backstroke motion, eyes closed and still,

nothing matters anymore

While I sit there thankful for my credit score.

 

 

 

 

Why can’t people stand the rain?

A poem I wrote a long time ago (2012 I think) and remembered on this rainy Sunday!

Why do people hate the rain?

It talks and whispers of their pain?

The leaves quiver as the droplets trickle,

A metaphor of the uneasiness within,

It shows us something real

living in a society where we no longer feel,

Float along with the masses

Admire stangers with zeal

Wonder through the rain that you so hate and despise;

Uplifting emotions and a breath of new life,

Does the damp and cold offend or is it the reminder it provides?

That I am a flesh, and substance governed by –

Something out of my reach, beyond my comprehension,

Questioning my surroundings I ask the rain why.

Examine it’s form, perplexed pondering my biased interpretation

The essence of life it falls around me,

Humans running and shielding from life

only to enter an unnatural building where they watch the strangers on an unnatural device,

ensuring all traces of the rain are gone.

It saddens me.

The droplets fall from the eyes that viewed the droplets outside. nature?

Reality?

Or dread in the knowledge it is mere construction.

If I no longer accept this physical feeling as the cold, the damp, the wind,

will I find a new certainty within?

My mind spins as I fail to answer. To recategorise the cries of the sky as they fall onto my skin.

I want this to last forever,

I deserve to suffer an eternity of not knowing why this sensation is something we so dread.

For if I know not the true meaning of why I do things,

am I not already dead?