by aemelia

Blurb:
Our world is silenced. Forcibly.

 Schools feed us lymph meats and teach silent mockery instead of kindness between words.

Children were trained to hold numbness for the toiling.

 Poisoned food and unclean water are handed to society’s true builders.

 Glamorous buildings spring from fallen constructors, yet never give them space to breathe, even post mortem.

Blood coalesce inshady sweatshops, stain mining grounds that never grant safety, and clings onto child-harvested cocoa- this forgotten blood runs in every product we consume. Including so-called “ethical” ones.

Screams still resound in Africa -and they are blamed for calling out against systemic pain.
Places that once were lauded as lighthouses of democracy now flicker in the storm

This is a chapbook of screams that refuses to be forgotten.

Let us honor the cleaning aunties, the soup-doling grandmas, and those who sang while suffering for society’s sake. For us.

#1

Decayed food

The golden oils

precious life-blood of grain

sustaining with its shoulder

the arteries of kitchens

are fresh taken from trembling hands

before they are poured

into black-stained boxes

by numb officials

armed with clean latex gloves

that seems so very pale

when it reflects  poisonous residue

that hangs still in the corners-

Yet they are unseen;

the cart is sealed

as if all will be safe

for the official pockets are adorned

with greasy bills

the oils, swishing around

ignored residue

become stained by poison

on their path to feed all;

yet for long they have been ingested

by unknowing populace

who have not been allowed near

the stained cars bearing their food

and blindly let trust

hurt their poor bodies

becoming cash pockets

of the medicine industry

while the officials seem uninfluenced;

their food are pure

and this poison reaches not

their high palates;

even as the seals are opened

and stains accusingly point

at decades of manipulation

it is soon sealed back up

in smothering censor.

#2

Poisoned by lead?

Doubly heavy poisons

are layered upon us;

Cold death and disease

a sure curse that impales our health

draining it of life-blood

with secretive red tape and paper

that lubricate every nook and cranny

consecrating them in

holy grease of corruption

sealing the windows

with glazed rubber stamps

whose mark smells of bureaucracy

and with the dull blade

of sweet paints, masked industrial waste

slew the veins of innocent children

for a drop of profit

A thousandfold more

than even iron-blooded Law

indulgently permits!

All that liquified death

tucked into pastries

from sources well-protected

and fed to students…

In a prestigious school, too

that demands grand offerings of wealth

just to partake in its courses..

Even these sacrifices

could no longer buy

a healthy future;

not to mention the scandalous oils

mixed with dark residue

and fished back out after dumping

placed in every glamorous dish;

or the school canteens that daily

close their eyes and allow sickly foods

to be offered to hungering students

so they may beget wealth from their seats.

O, clean food

I cry out for thee;

for you hang out of reach

ensnared by bureaucracy

and those who stoppage your flow

are never punished enough

for you to come forth freely.;

after all

those high-seated

need not worry for their stock

nor care for those who serve them;

and they lose mere laurel

where others cough up their blood

troubled by torment and disease

and enviroments that unsees conveniently

their old wounds

bestowing upon them new suffering.

O, is it lead

that poisons us most?

Nay; ’tis this vapor of corruption

slow venom of bureaucracy and capital

that intermingles with desire

empowering the worst

with the sheer immobility

the silence of cast-iron

to the perpetrators

a grace denied to those who dare speak.

Some miasma, it tries to stop action

by donning the mask of nature!

#3

Care?

Toil and trouble break

even the most hardy and resilient;

and despite their diligent nature

they too fall to moldied drops

and cold foods o’erbound in additives

liquid torture for the innocent

that erode at homes and bodies

An invisible tide that the glamorous

refuse to name out loud

when they break ope wafers of falsehood

and produce a fashionable communion,

Or perhaps blame the individual

When one dares to confess;

A collective inaction,

Whose sacrifice is demanded

from one alone..

Or so it seems.

Every syllable of dolor

was lathered broadly ‘pon us

A sanctified harm.

Yet the smoke and mirrors

of paranoia mingled with proven fears

cast shades of incandidacy;

The gilded pods of entertainment

desperate to cut ope

very last sliver of connection

Prop us up in stages

where the audience is silent

A miasma that speaks more

than our open mouths

And yet we must perform

chained by guilt and responsibility;

for if-O Heresy!- a drop of sadness

is allowed to spill

The gasps of faux-rueful disapproval

resound like self-sufficient gossip

from masked, gilded listeners

who once merely stood by unsupportive

Or perhaps tossed in

flowering mockeries of kindness

That sucks off the blood of pain

to redden their uncaring cheeks

as they beget golden laurels;

Still, these chit-chat light gasps

So irrelevant for their whisperers

lands as heavy blades

stabbing into real flesh.

Ah, how delicately we place our hopes

upon sheets promising care

prayer-branches for life-saving medicine…

Yet oft this is not to be;

And when one cries out in pain,

suffering from unnamed diseases-

No response resounds.

And all that is left?

A soundless ridicule!

Not one dire issue solved;

Not one drop of consequence

For the gilded stamp

that had passively gorged

upon quiet blood of muffled patients;

and what palliative of holy help there remains

comes too little, too late

always slowed by red tape

till it grinds to deadly halts

Its sacred healing waters

 polluted by poisonous barriers

#4

Ready-made Decay

Ah, the tired students

Tormented by aching involution

A twisted rot that flails

Horrid whips of stress and distrust

Christening itself

as “healthy competition”

Drag on their heads

trying to keep up,

as they hide the rotten egg shells

beneath tidied beds.

The laminated lunch bell,

Awash in bureaucracy as it is,

Seems to bring a rush of relief

As exhausted eyes perk up

And students file into the canteen

Like fish swimming in artificial schools

Freed zombies, barely able

To drive their own feet forth
Following equally tired teachers.

Yet in this excuse of a dining hall

They are fed only icky lymph-meats

Flavored by sickness

And packaged as “nutrition”;

The galvanized boxes of sticky dishes

Were gilded by hush-money

That denies the ladle from serving

Even a base nourishment

To those who toil on.

A, how relegated the students

Munch on the cud-like rice;

They know that those who meant well
Even the best of staff and teachers

Are tugged into silence

By marionette-strings of corruption.

It silences all in its scene

Caring only for the “face”

Of its little performance.

And the students and staff

Rot on as they move, bound

To polished chairs

As chopsticks clink

Like unspoken cuffs

Upon veneered tables

And silence pervades

Invisible barriers seperating

The seated from those ladling

So they may never touch

And the curriculum may impart still

A chit-chat light derision

That presses heavy

Breaking tentative understanding

Without risking anything

Crudely open, like warm solidarity.

Mere walls beyond this prison,

Hidden beneath bland papers

And red carpets of approval seals

The high-seated puppeteers

Dine in lavish feasts

Each delicacy made from profit

Squeezed silenced suffering

Sacrificed in fear

Drained with iron claws of blind law

and hung by red tape.

#5

Decayed excuse of an water-pipe

O, how shameful

That one must cry out in pain,

Voices tormented by unacknowledged disease

Croakingly sharp songs from parched throats

Claw open white papers that merely silenced

With brave, cracked  howls against laminated excuses

Tearing the rubber stamps and red tape

That dare to stoppage even

A gush of clean water from dry lips

With pretensory, chit-chat light excuses

With disused pipeways and shady “resevoirs”

That deserve not the hope they were givn

A rot never explained, never named in notices

That offer in costly bought taps

 naught but grimy liquids

Tinted with strange smells

 Barely masked by symbolically-doled chlorine

An excuse for true cleansing

For the lack of filters

For the dark tables beneath which

The base of health is sold for mere profit

For the clink of laudatory wines

In banquets where the agony of commoners

Become dishes to feast on

Just another part of the criteria

The secret to wealth and power shared

In oily handshakes and hush-money

Flowing smoother than the waters

They fed to the citizens who trusted them

Who still bought shoddy water at 9 times the price

While nestlé buys a clean reservoir for less;

To those in cracked battle grounds

Puppets above resevoirs of riches for the war-funders

where water was never acknowledged

as a right for the toilers

And mercenary bombs, laughing,

contaminate this base supply

Poisoning silenced lips behind the scene

Never truly challenged for their acts

As gold-leaf donning hegemons

Silently prop up these mercenaries

While pretending democracy and freedom;

To those in Hangzhou, whose tap water

Came outrageously muddied, with a smell

As offensive as if it were waste-liquids.

And  even when the brave called out

When these voices are heard by the kind

Spread out in hopes of resolution

The promised reparation never came;

White papers and black notices

Heavy with threat, light like derision

Dare to muffle the cracked,  blood-sputtering voices

While the puppeteered media glosses over

These piercing songs, distracting

By offering the next fast-food tale

The next big thing

Heavily spiced with  derisive commentary

Meant to divide the voices of the screaming.

The rusted pipes were announced “fixed”.

The water supply was never fixed,

The officials gave shoddy excuses

When it comes to repairing

equipment in poor communities,

Where minorities are harmed

Silently punished just for living,

Derided when they toil on with diseases

Barely alive, the only reward for their work

And blamed for fighting back;

While with faces oily with glamorous apology

They please the well-off, affected residents

And problems, issues, “inconveniences”

 disappear overnight for the well off

To make them feel higher than those suffering

From broken lungs, from cracked skin

So the population remains divided;

But not even their kindest members

Who uplift with their relatively elevated position

 those they were told to trample

Those all were educated to despise

Even these truly honorable

Cannot be heard, cannot

Sing in their favor without being derided

Their lives, dedicated to those

Who built this hubris-inflater neon city

Were laughed off alongside

The true, deliberately dried roots

Who are demanded to stand

And yet were never watered

#6
Blood-stained coltan

A! how hands of old and young alike

Cusp carefully the neon opium-pod

A lilac snuff-box of numbing entertainment

As if it were consecrated

Some saccharine portal through which

The unending stream of cornucopia

May stimulate its glory;

How its hypnotic glow

Is chewed by numbed mouths

Craving a sweet palliative

To the hunger for meaning

And the tiring routine of meaningless work

In corporate spaces

filled with smoke and mirrors

Where moldy homes

 and poisoned foods ingested

By shamed, shaggy breaths

Are conveniently tucked

beneath corporate, pastiche renditions

Of the feast-tables the rich dine on

A glamorous feeling of superiority

That never feeds, only teases

At the hunger haunting employees

And reduced into naught more

Than mere chit-chat for gaudy derision

So the appropriately suited well-off

May have someone’s pains to chew on

And laugh innocently after squeezing

Every last drop of worth from it

Selling it with boldface lies

As “wellness” reminders

To those craving enhancement

A break outside the wheel

And got instead silent ridicule

When accused, the glossy lies

Yet punishes those who dare speak of it

With false kindness that sedates.

Ah, yet hidden beneath deepest drawers

Banished from the glamor

Or perhaps, when noticed

Is puppeteered by apple-shiners

Turned by seekers of fame and gold

Into harmless charity projects

Lay the blood-drenched secrets

None dare reckon

A decadent silence, fed

To society’s pale mouth

Not to feed with succor

But seal the cries of agony

With a disarming sense of complicity;

Tucked beyond the media scoops

Where tantalizing fast-food tales

Are plucked without

reckoning the pain beneath

Lay fields of rare metals

Worked by purple-sheened young lips

Pale and raspy despite the heat

Who must claw out poisonous riches

And suffer all its tolls

Their lungs struggling

Tormented by dull black growths

So blatantly similar to

 the minerals lashing whips

Feasting upon their tissue

Reflecting the corporate boards

Who drink rich wines of stifled screams;

While these diggers never beget

Even a drop more

than the bare minimum

To work another day!

Even after Congo and colonial boards

After decolonization that

Merely bond continents and markets

To new, tilted stages of glamor

Their hands are still unshielded

From tormenting pains

Spots on their crumbling lungs

Brought by handling coltan

So similar to the poor women

Who drew coal out crawling on bellies

Or had lungs stuffed by cotton;

Even as the children tremble

 the iron whips struck still

In the hands of indifferent slave drivers

Who bound these younglings

To nothing short of slavery

and never allowing them

A chance to break free

Or even properly live. ;

The wheel of pain never stops.

Ha! how ridiculous

Do the self-righteous men sound

In their crocodile shoes

When they dare to ridicule

Children who never had

The luxury of choice

While standing on their bones!

Yet still, their insidious voices

hypnotize developed realms

Soothing consumers into

Saccharine, false bliss

A dazed citizenry, awed

By the glamor of “self starters”

Are led away blindfolded

unseeing bold reports

That liken accusations of Leopold

In the sheer cruelty documented

As their hands are bound by inertia.

But now… we can no longer

Laugh the blood away

From our precious devices.

Let us scream, then,

For those who are silenced

By disease unearned

And let us help them to

the sweet fruits of their work

And heal them with our aid

So they may emerge well again;

And let the corporate colonizers

Face the bitter seed of suffering they sown

As their fields are vacated of “volunteers”

And we crown adorations to the formerly nameless

instead of the noxious wealthy.

Let the warm refuges for the suffering

Outlast this intoxicating sheen

And reclaim dreams it had stolen

The sacred fire, the right to wellbeing

Will never be extinguished or tame!

#7
Cocoa™: deluxe suffering

Bars of silky chocolate

Dark, rich wafers, stolen reverie

Packaged with gloss

Are bought numbly without question

Just so onlookers, or perhaps

Young children troubled, crying

For sugary palliative

To stoppage unacknowledged guilt

May munch on smooth snacks

While watching calmly

The next fast food story

A petite, nostalgic sweet

 taken as granted pacifier

Its origins unquestioned

A carrot, drenched in decadent blood

To complement the stick of expectation

And drive the toiling forward

In unfilling, burning sweetness

That, like chit-chat light breaks

 a mere delayed medicine

To fill in the lack

And never cure the real ache

Yet O! how the sun cruelly

Presses its charring rays

Upon tears and aching, young bodies

Lashed on by agony of life

To submit their lives

Into the bitter cocoa fruits

That hang like a false promise

So close yet so far from reach

And always disappointing

After being plucked by exhausted hands.

A, soon their sweat and metallic bleed

Evaporates into caking, dry soil

Or cleaves onto the cocoa

Took by laughing slave-drivers

Dressed in fine PR suits

Ready to truck the fruits of work

Spitting on those who croaked

For pitiful existence alone;

And even as their speakers sputter

Manufactured consent and fake care

The lash still fell, still fell

Wounding always lands whose blood

Coalesced into mere treats

#8
Forgotten War

O, in corporate rooms

Glossed with PR “humaneness”

Yet decorated with the old bones

Old chains holding up

Pale tables of riches, ivory

Drenched with blood,

A metal smell

No smoky chit-chat can scrub off.

There, where the high-seated

Dine upon flesh of the enchained

The profit they squeezed

Out of a toiling population

Tormented by conveniently forgotten pains

By care denied by mere derision

By poisoned homes and sickening foods

That churn in stomachs, corroding

Both mind and body

Yet never quite cured, never

Never truly named, always forgotten

Conveniently, like crushing unpleasant smoke

The diners, vulture-men draped in gold-leaves

Conveniently masked suitors of capital,

 Rejoice over how

Their brand-new, packaged cuffs

Sold in “developed” neon fairs

Some sort of “consensual” bond

Labeled, lustred as “privilege”

Saccharine entertainment paired

With cold expectations

Still remains conveniently unseen, taping

The mouths of desperate applicants

Binding so effectively to their wrists

So they keep powering the wheel;

How their employees

 may be spurred like slaves-

No, more as beasts of burden

Who are fed mere cud

A deriding excuse, insult of nourishment.

O; and now their next opportunity

The next bucket of bloodied gold

Has come knocking!

Their patrons, gold-masked statesmen

Unholy demigods of bloody riches

Have been grooming regimes far beyond

Puppet rulers who bow

And polish their boots to keep a seat

Upon conveniently unseen realms

 these statesmen long cut ope and reduced

Into a resevoir of ready-taken wealth;

And now the fruits of conflict

So enfattening to the apparatus

Have ripened in the explosion of war’s blossoms

Promised to behaving monopolies

Who merely need to prepare

The flashy stage of fast-food news

Or perhaps weave spider-webs of hush money

To partake in the delicious, decadent feast

War serves to its gilded guests, State and Capital.

So gleaming tools of murder

Is silently sold behind oiled doors;

The real struggle is exorcised

By elite media, the pastiche-priest of “joy”

Who sprinkles acknowledgement

Like golden holy-water upon apple shiners

Seekers of viewers and fame

Who kneel before glossy thrones of such priests

And lead a chorus of the great, “liberal” narrative

A hypnosis, a deliberate, convenient forgetting

So the sounds of pains

The scream of children blown into shreds

The tears of mothers trying to find food

The smoke of grain burnt

By laughing robber-barons

The laughter of unstained mercenaries

Crushing outstretched palms

Conveniently out of camera frames

The sound of homes breaking apart

Into fume-haunted rubble

The deafening explosion

That turns peoples against each other

Will never haunt;

Or, when heard by the awake

Is silenced, cut open

Into the next fast food tale

The next tickle at numbed senses

To spur up consumption

Of commodified charity

That even when full hearted

Even when the organization

Never took a single bite of

The garnered offerings for survivors

And ensured they arrived where needed

Where others less kind

May have denied responsibility;

Even then the true disease

The dried patches of exhausted land

Children sickly from malnutrition

Forced to labor for those who spit on them

Just to live another day-

This sickness is never quite cured;

And their bruised, tormented bodies

Their trembling hands as they

Clean the mess of war

Gathering at the risk of their life

Remnants of bombs and shrapenal

Scrap iron heavy with lament

Conveniently forgotten by the camera

And are derided by the colonizing elites

As they are forced to work on

By unspoken iron whips that leave

Unmarked pains

as deserving “atonement”

Told to be “grateful” for the opportunity

Even as they are fed less

Than the fattened horses of such war-aristocrats

This struggle is never sung

And it’s medley of pained screams

Are taped into saccharine silence

Forgotten, conveniently

As if its song was nought

But a mere carnivalesque background

To the stage starred

By its polished, commodified clippings.

But beneath the stage, a spark.

A wounded mother, scarred

Ten times more than imaginable

Scorched by hate from every direction

From countrymen blinded

And foreign, self-righteous mercenary alike

She still stirred soup for the crying

Ladling warm nourishment in the rubble;

The wounded and disillusioned

Who laid bare their wounds for help

And got nothing but deriding napalm.

Their steely eyes forge still

Tools of precarious defenses

As they with incomplete limbs

Tremblingly fought off

The darkness of bloodshed

And crawl towards the light of tomorrow

So their children may cure the deep poisons

That blades and bombs have etched into land

And finally, finally heal

The bitter scars of hatred and division

So their mothers may sing again

And this time be heard by all

unsilenced by tilted neon lights
Uncut by convenient band-aids of “charity”
That dares to price tag the unweighable.

#9
Ignored aftermath: unsung war

O, the glossy drones package with cold lens

Tantalizing smoke-blossoms of explosions

Brilliant flames that scorch earth

Yet somehow left wounds in unseen places

Where media may later amnesize its audience into forgetting

after this war’s cycle of garnering pastiche sympathy

As it prepares the next heavy-spiced fast food story loop

From forgotten wounds and smoky, chit-chat light derision

Upon a suffering population whose scars

could bring equivalent fractures to saccharine lies

With their tale drenched with metalic bleed and napalm

Chemical weapons conveniently forgotten

Dropped by laughing, implanted regimes they never chose

And yet they are forced to pay for;

And when frail peace descends, sealed

By treaties naught more than flurries of Band-Aids

The toiling and ashen worked on still, driven by

Whips that leave no mark but internal harm

Lowering their heads, the sweepers

Scrub away the mess behind the glamorous stage

just to live another day unharmed;

And when the glossy treaty-bread arrive

Dropped by flying balloons that pretend care

The wrappers reveal naught but airy wafers

Bland and saccharine, never feeding.

And when the warlords come parading

Upon lavish seats and carried by suited servants

They spit upon those they force to kneel

even as the old meekly shine their boots

Before they leave with pompous ‘superiority’

Deriding the land as “deserving” such pain.

Yet in the rubble they glide over

Lay cracked kitchens and flimsy tin-pots

Where elder mothers with soft eyes glimmering hope

Long worn by time and pains meant not for mankind

grind bone and precious food into chowder

After bowing their heads in bittersweet gratefulness

When they open wrappers they know will disappoint

And, singing thanks and humble prayers,

Repurpose the wafers into sweet treats for the young

They water the broth down with love, simmering soups

To help swallow the bitter but feeding homemade bread

That may help another child, another malnourished

Last till the next week when true supplies may come

By strange means, hidden in cloaks and worn bags;

And in the shambled huts rising nearby

Frail, ashen growths of the aftermath

Work the angered, the former believers

Beneath stained lamps, beside empty rooms

Their nearly fingerless hands combatting pain itself

They with eyes burning with unsaleable rage

Refused to break their spine, hardened

With bruises and lost children who shed blood

For a cause long lost beyond hope.

When others sold deadly scraps at immense risk

For mere living and deriding stamps

They soldered shrapnel bombs out of residue

A sharpened defense tool, drenched

In the blood and sweat of those

Whom even plaster and gauze cannot heal

Not to mention the pitiful band-aids of official “peace”.

 The soup arrives at their doorstep too, wrapped

In quilts hand-knit by concerned aunts.

They silently sip the warmth and offer

A grateful head nod, even if the movement

Gives them searing pains.

Solidarity is born even in smoky rubble

Where children learn hunger too early

The drones still glide in gloss

To deride those who resist

But the smoke of soups simmer upwards too

And the pain will sing louder

For no saccharine sweetness can numb

Blood into silence

#10

Tears behind glossy strings

The formerly tormented, finally

Arising from bones and scorched ground

Remembering the metallic bleed

Chop away at the heavy iron chains

With bloodied blades heavy with sacrifice

They faced persecution and untold pains to unravel

heavy, bitter residue of colonization,

so their people may beget

The deserved, sweet fruits of liberty!

Their cries are heard:

Now, the whip and yoke that formerly

Tormented the backs under a burning sun

Or perhaps lashed them for a drop of profit

are finally exposed, even in places formerly hidden

The toilers chipped free from chains

by common effort and bold, loud exposés

The voices of the people will never

Be silenced again by hunger nor chain!

Or… so they thought

When the glossy foreign media

Offered laurels, gilt praise and honor

To liberators of the formerly enslaved.

O, but when the old vultures

Finally are warded away

From partaking any longer from flesh

New carrion-birds came a-seeking

Dressed in gleaming PR and “free trade” excuses

With promising debt-incurring that come with strings

The high-seated, potent corporations tempted

New leaders hoping to grow something new

And still faithful in the glamorous new face

Capital had donned to return;

Yet behind every handshake, hidden away

From even kind, clear-sighted leaders

Is the reforging of gilt chains

The screams of hunger and conflict

As mercenaries, “peacemakers” employed

From trembling, hungry families

Who never had a choice to live with dignity

Draped in borrowed gloss that

Dare laugh at true honor like chit-chat

And tied by deridingly gilded marionette lines

To carry out orders just to sustain their loved ones,

mocked by a blood-sipping system

As just another useful local face

To be hated, to direct righteous anger away

From the true cause

And these dressed, unwitting slaves of the company

are forced to drive the weeping children

With new whips™ that leave no marks

Curled tools of coerced silence, command and threat in one

A curled tool that torments both toilers and user

As their penance are cut into HR

packed into oily wrapping, smoke and mirror

into fake sympathy, some crocodile’s tear

In the eyes of those they must spur

Even as they gain nothing but enough for the next day

For a forced betrayal of one’s own soul

And are alienized, told to be grateful

While masked patrons spit on their family

With a smiling, condescending derision

With pitiful wages that chain and lure

And when these crocodile-leathered men come

In HR-approved cars

They are showered in artificial praise

for not drawing blood, even when

Their servants know the bite of the whip

That never shows, only wounds

So inspecting media drones may glide over

The cracks of tormented ground and bitter sweat

Shed for the next self-help tutorial tale

Of supposed self-makers chit-chatting banal tips

Seated atop polished bones that built their stairs

#11

The Unsung Fighters

Now the screams of pain

The rigtheous furor

Against new empires dressed in PR

Against debts that weigh like death

Upon struggling peoples needy of aid

Are finally heard, finally

Outpowering the hypnotizing song

That rocked developed worlds to sleep

Even as they sit atop

Disguised bones of toilers abroad

Ground down, claimed to be mere tiles

To the new, glamorous order

One supposedly made from opportunity;

Even those who smell the lingering imperial blood

The bit-back sting of new whips™

They are bound, too, into the cradle

Pinned into inaction by a lullaby of impotence

A fake sense of inability for something better

When all this suffering and death

Could be avoided by no longer participating;

Indeede, most are awake from the lie

Yet are still bound by inertia into its beat

Till this scortching song came tulmulting in

Too much to contain, too heavy to sell

And is answered by the genuine, those

Who long despise meaningless war

And called back for peace with bravery

In a system where war was the background.

Yet soon, media-men coaxed this song

Into corporate dressing-rooms

Promising platforms and views

If only it would ask for aid within “polite” formats.

It was given bandaids for healing,

Treaties pretending peace,

Wafers masquerading as nourishment,

It’s fresh vigor drained out

To keep wheels of entertainment churning

Some oiling substance to feed the machine

Processed into safe pleas for NGO aid and charity

Cries of children blurred into pleasantries

Into pastiche community projects meant

To help put one’s conscience to sleep

To adorn a student’s application sheet,

To be the next big event in the HR calendar,

The stopping of bombs is celebrated as success

by those who protested for peace

When the true war, conveniently

Hidden beneath muffling band-aids-

The eyes of starving children

The sighs of soup aunties

The flecks of internal bleed

Only remnants of disease and harsh whips™

Upon the scorched backs of toilers

The scraps of metal collected at risk

From barbed fields and wounded ground-

This war was never truly acknowledged

But it screams. It scream with brave self-defense

With shrapenel repurposed to fight vultures

An explosive shield against the unseen whips

With smoke rising in the burnt rubble

The curl of warm soup made by aunts

contributing what little they have

Risking losing all they have to a cruel world

And still daring to bet

That alert, divided brows will soften

Before shared bowls

In this smoke, dismissed as “unimportant”

Laughed off as “petty”

Lay the true war, the true struggle

#12

Eulogy of the unofficially drowned

A soaked ,dull rice bag

Carried by wrinkled hands

Floats on unexpected waters, seperated

From bones once carrying the bag

Hands, now reported as “lost”

Honored only by trudging relatives

When muddy, brown waters came pouring

With a disastrous, sudden descent

A shockingly unprepared-for trouble,

haunting a detachedly dry Capital.

The high-seated, fashionably dressed

With arched brows donning “surprise” like a pin

Mocking the fear of those caught off guard

That dares to laugh when trouble

Descends upon its people

like a grey tide of unacknowledged pain

And then mask itself with a lace cloaked pastiche-civility

A bitter excuse of apology, stamped

Signed in laminated names none dare question.

 The neon city wards off threatening floods

Into places less noticeable;

Those “fortunate” enough

To be at the centre, where disaster

Is yet blocked by bureaucrats

ordered to avoid risk at all cost

Shooed like docile lambs ,

So the golden centre-stage

may remain clean,if only in name

Yet faraway, in the edges of the city

Where the pains of disuse and lack haunt

The floods were allowed to enter;

Dirty water drowns shoddy homes

Hard-earned, unglamorous cars forced

Into breaking down for a breath of life;

The so-called anti-drowning equipment

Too long just a show in this dry land

True saving materials

Denied by derisive stamps

Thin sand-packs sealed in mysterious papers

And “emergency rafts” that are locked

In boxes meant for show;

Thanks to these unbreakable glass-barriers

The flood claimed 30 lives already!

Not to mention the lost, whose fate

Trudging in ashen water, trying to survive

By climbing higher in moldy buildings

Are yet unknown, forgotten, unrecognized!

Yet these lives were never cared for

Never mourned as they disappear

Beneath the concrete-tinted waves

Being alienated by invisible barriers

Somehow denied admission

from “impersonal” news stories

From the rest of the shining capitol

Despite their close distance.

Like scraps, the lives

Of other places less known

Less illuminated by glossy media

Thanks to impoverishment

 supposedly earned,

Yet came from an ignored draining

By vampiric manufacturers and industry,

The drowned in such grey realms

were tossed away conveniently

 dismissed as irrelevant

Forgotten in favor of the next fast food story,

Their relatives told by notices to move on

To continue allowing grey monotony

Drive them and fellow toilers on

As they build more richly sheened buildings

That has bases made from their bones

Yet never has a space for honoring them.

Not even in spaces between

friendly employee whispers

For even those low in corporate ladders

Are deliberately seperated from the “base” blue-collars

Barriers built since the start “education”

Accused by teachers of being lazy,

 laughed off, raised as some negative example

Beneath cold LED lights and rooft they built

Even as they silently keep the ground clean

Keep the halls glossy and dustless

Keep the food coming to mouths,

They are still derided by pale chit-chat.

Divided by numbing entertainment,

They are spurred to see the other with suspicion

As their real pleas for justice and aid

Are conveniently unheard, kept stifled

Beneath grey concrete and seas of papers

So even their cries just to live

Will never reach out

#13

LACK.

Hunger.

 It haunts like normalized shame does.

 Haunts cracked concrete, moldy walls

Promises too lightly discarded

Carried by the frail backs of toilers

Hypnotized by saccharine lies

Promises of “opportunity”

That drive them like carrots never fed.

Lack simmers in tin worn too thin

Thinner than the ladle

A mother or concerned auntie

With hands eroded by hunger

Scarred by forgotten torment

That should have been awarded a medal

Yet were given palpable lies

Laminated excuses of “recognition”.

And o, who remembers the hands

Of valiant mothers anymore,

When celebrity appearances

Pre-scripted, sweetened love stories

Runs better than a child’s death

Dismissed as suicide

Even as their young blood

Corrode plastic stairs

In raw stomach-acids, exposing

Lies fed in classrooms instead of love

The canteens denying true nutrition

Demanding gratefulness for some “privilege”

Supposedly coming with student hood

And spur students into numb derision

Unquestioned, unchallenged

A hunger forgotten?

The saccharine love tales

A palliative for the awake, the feeling

So as to chain them with expectation

Numbed from the pain

trained to deride

when their loved ones

Are taunted in corporate chit-chat

And bound by a false sense of “complicity”

Lured by promises of partaking in

Profits squeezed from faraway land

To distract from real hunger.

These time-thinned hands

 Stirr what little they have –

bones, generously tear-salted meats-

Into a thin gruel, warm soup

Just so the tearful children

Forced to bear the heavy weight of hunger

Swallowing cooked, carefully rationed lies,

Cardboard announcements

Smiling “improvement in progress”

doled into school trays and lunchboxes

Barely enough nourishment 

for those meant to grow,

 May rise again on the second day

shielded by frayed blankets

 As the wallpaper loosened before cold winds

And freezing leakages trouble unrested bones

With disease too often dripping unacknowledged.

Even this thin “soup”

Cannot be found

In every kitchen, every table

For in colder kitchens, where adults

Are too frozen to help their children,

Silence bites like frost deeper

into unfed stomachs forced into silence.

And even in warmer homes

The food is too often unknowingly poisoned

with deliberate lies, forgotten

Conveniently hidden by veils of hush money

Churning disease, so saccharine “health industry”

May suck away the last drop of worth

From those too hungry to speak up.

And corporations that once partook

In the unfortunate toiler’s fruits

And used their hunger-induced quiet

To reduce costs for the next show

A mask of glamorous lies to boast

These high seated, briefly feigning concern

Discard the corpse into amnesia

at the next masquerade-feast of hegemons

Where lives are merely food scraps

And worth, a fine vintage to be boasted

Its bloody, gaping cost forgotten, warded

By the holy water of numbing entertainment

fed mere wafers, laminated cardboard

A pitiful excuse of food.

The soups, when seen

Beyond “soft-censor” zones

kept away from the feed,

are gilded, cooled

Into glossy communion-wine

Ready-packaged trends

The starving, shooed from having truthful food,

are derisively told to learn

Should they want some crumbs.

But now… the children sing.

They will no longer silence

Hunger in exchange for niceties.

They rise. No wall of fame

No exclusive stages

May chain down the guttural cry:

FOOD! FOOD!

It rumbles in every gilded wall

Shakes awake every toiler

Who bore the hunger silently

Thinking they were alone.

And now…. when the neighbors

Too long taught to despise each other

Trade carefully preserved soup stock,

 the banquets in gilded halls

Crumble from bold screams!

#14

Liturgy of the forgotten

O, we sing still

our hymns of remembrance

Though all we get

for our toil and trouble is

rusted wastewater

to down slow poison

As they bear down on

 our already heavy burdens

Even as we worked on

With stomachs never fed

As if they wish to crucify

squeeze out the last drops

of blood and sweat

out of our tired bodies

to turn into sweet profit;

yet with mere red tapes and paper

they stoppage our screams

denying, so lightly

our pain

as they gleefully eat

at our fruits in gilded halls,

unashamed of themselves.

Blissfully they dine,

 unaware of the suffering it took to water

such brilliant growth.

And still, we labor

Placed conveniently outside sight

so none will be troubled

by pangs.

They pin the gem of our work on

a bureaucratic lapel-turned-suit

 never unraveled as promised

they delay our feed

and with a smile

light as chitchat

and heavier

than the debts we bear

depose of the stains

the last remnants

of our beloved martyrs

who died from broken promises

and the burden of chains.

And still, we must labor

without even the feed

a beast of burden has.

Let us partake, then

in this joined song;

our tales of suffering

blackens the palest of papers

and chars the light derision

that bond us in unseen dolor

So we may break them

Like the tame priests break

bland wafers

saccharine fast-food tales

and be free of their insinuous reins

That dares to extend to our joy

and numb our trembling lips

into pale privatized disorders

A, blessed be the suffering

Who bore the crux of the weight

No bread was fed to them.

Only wafers of lies and fake care,

always late, not sufficient

to truly fill.

Let this murderous inertia

Of thrones and corporate media

that keep bones under beds

and chitchat around true issues

Be stopped

By flames that cleanse

and rebirth this dried earth

with the waters

of true life

#15

Benediction of the Starved

The throats of the toiling resound

With sounds of hunger

too overwhelming

to be restrained

by the plastic plaster

a muffler of stigma.

We starve, insist

The hollowed sockets

and thin, frail bodies

that yet still work

without even having their fill;

The stomach, flattened

still awaiting nourishment

accuses righteously;

and it will no longer

be silent to be “good”.

O, the priests of faux cornucopia

lure us into a hypnotized trance

as they kept us craving for more

And yet fed us mere wafers

fast-food tales that

never truly nourish

only tease and numb the appetite

With heavy spices

So we won’t know that

When we pray for release

They collect our sweat

and turn it into the flesh of worth

while feeding us mere rust water

that lurch in our stomachs

bearing us down with disease

so they may beget more profit

and laugh, so carelessly

When we stumble,

unaware of the poison

that torments our bodies

and make us into zombies

that work on still

even as the red tapes

deny us true feed

and the clean pods of entertainment

try and cut us apart

so our joy can be owned too

A, but hunger will tear ope

any barriers

that dare stop its path.

And now…the toiler

will no longer sleep

content and silenced.

They will rise.

They will help each other up

as the bureaucrats

ridicule them,

lightly dismissing

entire lives

with chit-chat comments

of their supposed “incivility”

while denying the devices they placed

to deprive the toiling of choice.

It’s imperfect, yes.

Disputes and issues abound, yes.

But they will build;

Ragged soup kitchens

where all can be warm,

Their hungers acknowledged

and finally fed,

like no stamped paper ever did,

for these papers

can only muffle and quiet,

never nourish.

There will be communal aid

bread and rainment given freely

to the desolate and forgotten;

though worn,

their warmth is true

in ways no spiced tale and fake promise

ever knew.

And there will be reclamations

of the homes,

so long eroded by lack of care

and reaped by landlords

profiting despite-no, because of

The poor condition of their tenants.

Now, these imperfect homes

will be patched up with imperfect love

no eviction can quite remove.

And slowly, the cold bubbly barriers

the high-seated lay to stop

simple acts of kindness

will melt under the heat

of real solidarity.