Compassion

There’s a man on the corner. I don’t know his name
He smiles regardless of cold or the rain
He sits on the corner with a cup in his hand
He sits there and smiles, this ragged old man
People pass by, not a second to spare
Compassion lost in busy lives. Do they see him there?
So there the man sits until his smile has faded
His face filled with despair, sunken and shaded
When a woman walks over, burdened with bags
Hands one to the man, and her sweater he snags
To get her attention and tell her in tears
He hasn’t held that much food in years.
God, help us find compassion, show us a way
To brighten or lighten even one persons day
Help us open our hearts, open our eyes
To be the shoulder on which somebody cries
To hold open the door to let others walk through
To introduce people when someone is new
But what about places far overseas?
Places left without hope and filled with disease?
Mother lays in a dirty bed
Upon her lap rests a little head
hollow eyes stain her dress with tears
Confirmed the worst of his heart broken fears.
She raised him well, all on her own,
Brothers and sisters left long ago
When they could no longer bear the hurt
Of bellies empty all but dirt
Each fell asleep and never awoke
Taken under deaths far stretched cloak,
Now this woman here she lies
Slipping under the cloak, although she tried
To stay back for her child here
The boy who stained her dress with tears.
You are not deaf, why can't you hear?
You are not blind, why can't you see?
Twenty-five-thousand mourning cries
Twenty-five-thousand people die
Not in one year, not in two
Not in a month, not in a few
Twenty-five-thousand every day
Yet we choose to look away.
Not just the people in our city streets
Hungry, without a thing to eat
It’s people found in every land
Who need the touch of a loving hand.
God, help us find compassion, show us a way
To brighten or lighten even one persons day
Help us open our hearts, open our eyes
To be the shoulder on which somebody cries
To hold open the door to let others walk through
To introduce people when someone is new
Because maybe, just maybe the little things that we do
Will start something bigger. It could start with you.

Child's Hope

Dusty skin and windswept hair
Why bother with looks when there’s no one to care?
No one except that lifeless sweet breeze
That runs o’er land, fire and seas
Wrapping me softly in a timeless embrace
Lying to sleep my unweathered face
Kissing my eyes shut gently with prayers
When a voice in the distance yells as loud as it dares
"I’m the darkness you run from, I’m the fear in your heart
Why end your life now when you've hardly a start?
A start on the laughter, the joy and the fun?
Please don’t leave when you’ve hardly begun"
I spin on my heals, my expression quite wild
But who I find so upset is merely a child.
He runs to my lap, eyes glassy with tears
I pat his sweet head and ponder his fears.
We sit for a while until the wind howls my name
"that lifeless sweet breeze is ridden with shame"
The little boy says, quite solemnly
With a sigh, I ask him what brought him to me.
"I’m just a child of god and he said your were lost,
He told me to find you, whatever the cost"

Naked

I run alone on cold bare feet
Surrounded by people on city streets
I’ll go hungry for another day
Because all those people turned away
A yellow star tight round my arm
How does that make me any harm?
Invisible to society
Why has all the blame been left on me?
I march alone strait into hell
Your promises, they ring a bell?
You told of housing and gave a slum
Yet a victorious tune you Nazi’s hum
Victorious in our misery
Carrying on so bitterly
And when our hunger and pain no longer quenched your thirst
We were piled in trains and shipped in for your worst.
I lie alone and dream sweet dreams
Of my husband, my baby, ‘till woken by screams
They mimic my own from that blood curdling day
When they snatched up my baby and took her away,
They shoved a needle in her heart and froze it right quick
While mine skipped a beat till my stomach they kicked.
I sit alone, quite naked, curled up in a ball
Stripped of my dignity, my lover, my child, of all
The point in living is no longer there
So I forget to breathe and wrap up in prayers
I count by the second until I can’t count at all
I’m more in a dreamland until a black curtain falls.
My body was burned with many others, some alive
All left is my ashes, not hope and not pride.