Subscribe to Toylit

Showing posts with label hunger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hunger. Show all posts

Thursday, August 05, 2010

The Riddle of Hunger [Today's News Poem, August 5, 2010]

The Riddle of Hunger [Today's News Poem, August 5, 2010]
For L.S.

You landed on tarmac to follow the traces
Migration has stacked into boxes; abandoned
To history. Peering from awnings, near clotheslines
It watches you leave your hotel in the morning
To feed your devotion to gods of the pantry.
The concierge calls them a pest—he's requesting
You stop and consider the hunger of people
Who work here and live off the scraps that you're feeding
To cats. And the teevee is showing a Honda
For sale. And the Arabic letters are sprinting
To something—a price-tag of gibberish maybe—
To perfume and monitors; travel and trinkets.
The Pyramids stay in the desert while locals
Observe as you fill up the bellies of ferals.
And litter is everywhere. Riding the breezes
Are blizzards of plastic that cover the concrete—
So much like that pavement of home in the city
With gold in its gates and its offices roiling
With myths of creation of wealth—with the zeroes
Ascending to noumenal planes of existence.
And batting the numbers is Bast on her cushion
Of clouds, she rejects what they send her. She curses
Them slowly: their larders will empty, the vermin
Will triumph—and only for you will she spare what
Remains of a people who serviced her felines
In sands of antiquity; people who added
Their head to the predator, hoping to answer
The riddle of ages with stone in a valley.

“The ban is "a big deal" because the former Soviet Union has emerged as a major exporter on the world market, said Jerry Gidel, analyst at North America Risk Management Services, a brokerage in Chicago. Russia was the major supplier to Egypt, the world's largest importer, in the crop year that ended in May.”
– Tom Polan, The Wall Street Journal, AUGUST 5, 2010, 2:16 P.M. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100805-717766.html



Return to Toylit
Subscribe in a reader

Friday, June 11, 2010

God of Mouth and Anus [Today's News Poem, June 11, 2010]

God of Mouth and Anus [Today's News Poem, June 11, 2010]

My god of the mouth, you are guided by hunger.
Your diaper's tremendous, your drool is a river.
My goddess of zero, my ponzi of plenty,
My appetites grow, but I'm famished—I swear it.
I plumbed my own depths and I've emptied my innards—
I've filled up my diaper, and yet there is nothing
To slake what ignited a feast for the ages.
Unchanged, though I filled up the toilet of plenty,
I've crust in my pinches of flesh—yet I'm weeping.
I'm soaking in filth, from my feast and my outlet.
What passes inside me's inert and uncaring,
The answers it shares are as empty as movements
Of gas—and as fleeting—oh god of the anus!

“Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly dropped in May for the first time in eight months, indicating the rebound in consumer spending is cooling as Americans boost savings.”
– Bloomberg Businessweek, June 11, 2010, 4:41 PM EDT
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-11/u-s-economy-retail-sales-unexpectedly-fell-in-may-update1-.html

“And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30... lamenting years of useless sacrifice. Vegetables for his parents, his wife’s asthma medicine, the navy track suit his 15-year-old daughter craved — all were forsworn on the theory that, even in North Korea, the future was worth saving for. “Ai!” he exclaimed, cursing between sobs. “How we worked to save that money! Thinking about it makes me go crazy.””
– Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times, June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/asia/10koreans.html?scp=3&sq=north+korea&st=nyt

Return to Toylit
Subscribe in a reader