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~ 1 ~
Why would I care if someone unknown to me,
Living somewhere beyond the vast blue sea,
Was slowly dying without enough to eat
While I am dining on my piece of meat?
How do I feel, for someone I do not know,
Someone who lives where I will never go?
They are none existent in this world of mine
Where things are good and mostly fine.
I see TV pictures of a child among the flies
And I feel sad, but that is no surprise.
But I turn it off and off I go to bed
Without ever knowing that the child is lying dead
Where I last saw her just before she left my mind.
And my brief sadness made me feel so kind.
~ 2 ~
"Oh isn't it terrible, for those children over there
Starving to death, their bodies lying everywhere?
It must be awful with no clean water to drink,
Diarrhoea causing their little bodies to shrink.
I can't bear the thought it's so terrible to behold,
It's a living Hell for both the young and old.
Someone should help. Well yes, I will pray
And God will help them in his mysterious way;
Send gifts of food to make them all feel well
Or will He leave them to rot in their foul Hell?
Well I've done my bit I've sympathized and prayed.
Have faith my children, do not be afraid!!
The Lord will bless you and keep you in His care
Though you die in agony from famine and despair.
~ 3 ~
Don't hide your charity behind your absent God.
Do not shun decision and place it on his hod.
Step up and be counted and find your real place
In the real world where you fear your own deserved disgrace.
Hide not your empty failings behind a passive sword,
Edged with the falseness of a sacred word.
What is not done is never done, for idleness is deaf;
Action serves life better than words serve your master's death.
For while you dream of heaven allowing starving kids to die
It seems to me your dreams are just a blatant selfish lie.
If you do not walk across the road, you reach not the other side,
And when you state excuses it will mean you've never tried.
So stop blaming all those others as a defence for yourself,
Because compassion buys no fodder and prayer restores no health.
~ 4 ~
I am selfish. I am indifferent but I sympathize and pray.
I was born a sinner and I am still a sinner to this day.
But I am not worried by these failings, or the sinful life I live,
For my God will take care of things, all my wrongs He will forgive.
It is not my actions He will judge me by, but what is in my heart
For I am just the way He made me, until the day I do depart.
He can take over all my thinking then I cannot cop the blame,
For the ignorance of my actions, that would bring another shame,
I can say, "Well God, He willed it"; that He works in mysterious ways,
When I'm faced with realities that are contrary to what He says.
I can turn away from anything and say, "God, He told me to -
For the Lord, He is the master, of everything I do."
I can be a critic or a racist; I can be a bigot or a spiv,
Because so long as I have faith in God, everything He will forgive.
~ 5 ~
Does it matter what your mind set is? Does it matter what you fear?
Do you not have friends and family whom you love and hold so dear?
Would you let your child die hungry when you had the food to give;
Deprive a neighbour of your water, who could not without it live?
Are you really any different, deserving more of life than him
Because you're black or blue or brindle, overweight or very thin?
Were you not born an earthling, as all us human creatures were,
Living life to make it better for those to whom we offer birth?
Yet how can beasts so burdened with superstition and deceit,
Isolated in their countries, famines wroth and death defeat?
How can they who know no better and those with tarnished brains
Know when to curb their avarice, pull back upon the reins?
It must always be the duty, the will, and the strong desire,
For the prosperous to change the fuel that stokes the Human fire.
~ 6 ~
Are we not all responsible for all that happens on this Earth?
Are we not of equal value: are we not of equal worth?
It is disgusting - it is atrocious, the affluent societies and their greed
While starvation claims the children who have such basic needs.
Yet we are all people with the same conceit and desires;
The same yearnings for achievement; the same inner burning fires?
But these people have no doctors, no nurses and no drugs.
Diseases wrack their bodies and they are robbed by brutal thugs.
They suffer AIDS; and Malaria; and foul dysentery is rife;
Die from wounds of a bayonet, or a machete or a knife.
These are desperate, starving people, who have children just like you
But their's lie dead in their arms and there is nothing they can do.
But you can do something. You can do a lot more than sit and pray,
It takes just a dollar from your wages, just a dollar from your pay.
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