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Poetry: Hunger

by Ethel Smith

I wake up in the morning
with an empty, hungry feel
As soon as I have showered
I have my morning meal.
I eat as much as I desire
until I feel quite full
but halfway through the morning
my brain begins to dull.
I need a snack to perk me up
and fill a little hole
I scoff a little chocolate
which seems to score a goal.

By twelve my tummy's grumbling,
it's feeling full of air,
it needs a little sustenance
some warm and tasty fare.
So on it goes, throughout the day,
this constant need for food,
this feeling that I'm starving
which really is not good.
It makes me eat more than I want,
or than I really need.
It makes me fatter and fatter
and really is pure greed.

Then I park my fat backside
on a comfy chair at home
I turn the television on
and I'm shocked by what is on.
Famine is being shown again
tearing yet another place apart
the sight is so distressing
it almost breaks my heart.
Even little babies
are only skin and bone
they have no food to nourish them
and do not have a home.

It makes me so ashamed
that I ever say 'I'm starving'
when I have no true idea
of a proper hungry feeling.
I eat in just one hour
what some folk eat in one day
and know this can't be right,
and should not be the way
that resources are shared
between people of the earth,
why should so many people
end up starving to their death?.

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