In This Time of Need

The world needs
shelter,
food,
love.

We need shelter
but aren’t we just sheltered?
Filters on
television, internet, books, magazines.
“Tommy, close your eyes
the war is on the news again.”
World, close your eyes
close your eyes
pay no attention to
the dying children in
Sierra Leone,
Vietnam,
Cambodia.
They need shelter.
Since we are already sheltered
we stay in our sheltered bubbles,
afraid to see the world.

We need food.
Feed our mouths.
Starve our minds.
In America children get
fatter and fatter.
In Iraq children get
shot.
Starved.
Enslaved.
In America children cry for
candy, toys, video games.
In Iraq children cry for
dead parents,
dead brothers,
dead sisters.
With overflowing mouths,
American children scream
“feed us!”
Lying on the ground with overflowing wounds
Iraqi children scream
“save us…”
So we feed our already-full childrean
until their stomachs are so bloated with food
that their minds are void
of that knowledge that
their American soldier fathers
are killing those Iraqi children-
whose stomachs are bloated with air.

We need love.
Children need love.
Some of us love children.
Some of us love children so much that we
shell out five thousand dollars
to fly to Phnom Penh
and shell out five hundred dollars
to buy a child
to rape.
To break.
In this day and age
where movies and music
all claim that sex equals love
then who are we to say
there is a difference between
loving children and
making love to children?
Not a bad deal.
Five hundred measly dollars
(which can be made in two weeks with a minimum-wage-paying-job-at-a-store-that-brings-in-about-two-thousand-dollars-every-eight-hours)
for a night with a seven-year-old Thai boy.
Or an afternoon with a fourteen-year-old Cambodian girl.
There’s a whole menu to pick from.
Children need love.
Don’t we just give them what they need?

Shelter.
Food.
Love.
Perhaps the world needs to need a bit less
and see a bit more.

But too bad nobody cares.