Tag Archives: poor

Have and Have Not

You laud that all you have, you have earned

The blood and sweat of your toils payment

While covering the working poor and unemployed

With a blanket of hate and hypocrisy

Are not your hands outstretched

Collecting the tithe of the state

You are no different than those you so despise

It comes at no less a cost and is no less a handout

Than that received for the sustenance of life

Is sharpening your intellect from the pockets of the people

Somehow more noble than feeding children and the poor

You cry for the state to back down

While pickpocketing the very social programs

You so vehemently claim to detest

You hypocrite! You cannot have it both ways

You cannot suckle at the teats of mother state

While questioning that which she so graciously provides

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Turning a Blind Eye – A Tanka

Image Credit: productiveflourishing.com

Image Credit: productiveflourishing.com

Turning a blind eye

Gives momentary relief

But changes nothing

Only actions gets results

Poverty kills if ignored

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Take My Hand

Image,Credit: homesweethomeless.com

Image,Credit: homesweethomeless.com

A last look…Goodbye;

To this home we once called home.

Tossed out like garbage,

Circumstance counts for nothing.

Outcast by neighbors once friends.

~

Stranded on the streets.

Possibility for work

Without an address,

Hopeless beyond a nightmare.

Where will our family live?

~

In America

This happens far too often.

Promises broken,

Greed and profit motivate,

Leaving us impoverished.

~

“Pick yourself up!”, cried,

“By what?”, when you have nothing?

An offer to help,

A chance to practice what’s preached,

This is our sacred duty.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Are They Asking Too Much

Image Credit: lesiva.deviantart.com

Image Credit: lesiva.deviantart.com

Parents bleed failure

Shattered by their children’s cries

Hungry and dirty

Tortured by their poverty

They look above for relief

But prayers are ignored

They don’t qualify for aid

How poor must you be

In this, the greatest nation

Before they are helped

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Sin and Goodness

Sin and goodness

Are separated by a razors edge.

~

This pair expounded

By the fallible minds of men.

~

One only need look internal

To see their own fallibilities.

~

A query is begged of you;

Are the sins of the single mother,

Who resorts to harlotry to feed her children,

Any greater a sin in the eyes of God

Than those of the wealthy who hoard their riches

While ignoring the plight of the poor and infirm?

~

True sin resides in greed and contempt,

Goading sin from otherwise good souls.

~

The mothers desperation urged by good intent,

While the wealthy was compelled

Out of selfishness and pomposity.

~

Lines between sin and goodness blur

Through the perceptions of man.

~

Objectivity escapes us in our passion;

Making us the poorest of judges.

~

Would not their fates be best left

To the sagacity of God?

~

~~ Dominic R. DIFrancesco ~~

Though We Never Met – A Tanka

My dearest of friends

Though our paths have never crossed

Call me your brother

Fall into my outstretched arms

I will be there to catch you

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

The Fallen – A Tanka

Hands used to hard work

By night, lay calloused and broke

Like a fallen oak

Brought to it’s knees by axemen

Split and forgotten

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

The Road Home

Stove burners blue flame

Dangerous heat

Warming frigid trembling hands

Radiator cold

Rent control all he can afford

Children absent and estranged

He’s invisible in this world

Old friends to the old man gone

Passed before his time

Rotary telephone shows its age

Symbiotically keeping pace

Silent and out-of-date

Thoughts of youth flutter

Flashbacks in his fragmenting mind

Remembrances of companions

Lost loves

And a wife

Still 20 to him,

After a lonely decade adrift

Living because he won’t die

He longs to sleep forever

But it is not God’s will

Not his time

Shuffling to the stove

He warms his trembling hands

To wait for meals-on-wheels

Or the Lord to take him home

 

~~ D. R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

Tears for the Unborn – A Haiku

Image Credit: npr.org

Image Credit: npr.org

Knees pulled to her chest

A destitute mother weeps

For her unborn child

~~ D. R. DiFrancesco ~~

Out in the Cold

Image Credit: fealessmen.com

Image Credit: fealessmen.com

Glazed streets,

Reflection of street lamps blinding.

~~

Snowflakes fall,

Unique and ghostly frightening.

~~

Steam grates bellow,

Clouds of white coagulate in the night.

~~

Sidewalk frigid,

Stiff and frozen to the bone.

~~

Passersby laugh,

Homeless and so alone.

~~ D. R. DiFrancesco ~~