Children Of Anathema Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

Spoon full of rice, 'tis all a feast,
the same everyday, the scene never changes,
holding their plastic forks up high,
using their starved, extended stomachs
as shelves to place their plastic bowls,
their table for one in tattered shack,

hoping it isn't their last bowl of rice,
their landscape never changes; ,
ailing to illness...illness to death.

There are no clocks, no calendars here,
echoes of gunshots, new graves to dig,
time be measured by shadows off bushes
that sometime bear berries or poison;
the youngest can't tell the difference.

Never been there to say I've touched,
seen enough news, illustrations, graphic
almost had to turn away;

cannot imagine what it must be like
to bear such a Cross of suffering
before the Age of Reason.



FjR-MMVII