A Contribution

Bonding With A Dirt Floor; Bondage to Dirt

In lieu of helpless feelings
I will sing my heart out
Write words of comfort
Or try to.
No one knows your struggles
Better than you
And I don’t mean being ignored
By taxicabs.
No, your kind of hurt
Runs deeper than your skin
It seeps through your pores
And gets into your blood.
Your organs feel rotted
Wishing you were one with the dirt
That you sleep on each night
Instead of the dirt
That imprisons you
And holds you for ransom.
They all receive their pay.
Even the mothers and fathers
Who abandon.
Nothing short of the aunts and uncles
Who profit.
For that life to seem blissful,
The dirt must have clouded your mind
Something awful.
The skin and bones you’ve become
Reflect in the faces
As they mock you
On the bills you earn
On your back.

This is for the women
Who are traveling
To foreign places where most unpleasant events are waiting.
For the children who don’t understand
And when they do, are beyond hope.
Dirt floors and muddy, bloodied faces
Are not what you had signed up for.
Food for the “entitlement” of monsters
Is what you’ve become.
But know this:
If you ever escape
From the dirt that binds you,
Don’t let the shadow of silence
follow you home.
Be loud and pained.
Demand to be heard
For yours is a story to be passed down
And spread as far and as wide
as the eye can see.
Because monsters become monsters
And men learn entitlement.
No one is born ignorant to others’ pain.