Best Squalor Poems
Born into a life of poverty crime and squalor
where hunger and cold winds bite
and disease is rife
and it was a daily battle to stay alive
and find some food to stay alive.
Uneducated illiterate caught in the poverty trap
drinking polluted water
from the same polluted cholera riddled tap.
An impoverished woman
sells her body for a cheap bottle of Gin
and a lodging for the night
while a pickpocket and mutcher
ever watchful
look for a pocket to alight.
The deafening clunk and clatter
of horses and carts on the cobbled ground
and shouts from the street market traders
echo all around.
Children play and run through the narrow
crowded streets
dressed in rags no shoes upon their feet
The putrid stench from the gutter
and thick choking bellowing
smoke from factories
make one heath and make it hard to breath.
Dilapidated hovels and buildings
covered in black soot
horse manure and raw sewage
under foot.
Beggars with large mournful eyes
reach out pleadingly to the passing gentry
to fill their empty bowls with plenty.
A peeler pins a notice of a forthcoming hanging
at the local Gaol for the few who can read
upon a rusty nail.
A Mother desperate to feed her hungry children
steals a loaf of bread from a market stall
but is soon captured in the sprawl.
The judge sentences her to 10 years
penal servitude far over sea in Botany bay
but she dyes aboard the ship of fever
upon the way.
Her 9 children are sent to the workhouse
for the poor to gain some education
and work hard behind it's hellish door
never to see their Mother or escape poverty
ever more.
Peter Dome.copyright.2012.
Under a roof thatch born,
The flesh of my mama torn,
I wish I was never born,
As that day my mama was gone.
A cup of water to me is a trophy,
A tea-spoon full of honey, I am lucky.
A teenager, my head bears cement bulky
In the site as my sweat makes my tongue taste salty.
Red spots body-over, a daily routine
As mosquitoes make me their protein
As I lay at night without a curtain
And clothes I possess without button.
My mates on Sundays I see wearing the tie,
As at me they stare while passing by
Like a dirty dog about to die.
Begging, I notice not my cry.
In anticipation, I await the day
Where from church a man shall to me say
“Your pain is over boy so come my way”
Like the after storm sun-ray.
Squatters acquire the land
And no questions are asked.
Hovers litter the place
And open drains greet the eyes.
Stench queezes the life
But sellers defy the odour;
Frequent epidemic and death,
But the population continues to grow.
Nobody to care;
No questions are asked;
Sheer naked life,
Ever ready for the end.
Form:
He leans against
the silent factory
as bustling parrots
regard his plight
with heartfelt indifference
bathed in the glow
of touchscreen devices
and the notion of
absolution through
repetition.
Heels clack firm
paced on schedules
trampling the dust
into pavement cracked
and pocked like
the lamentable stares
of cardboard refugees
sprawled limp beside
grates pumping
exhaust.
Prepared Parlor Full od Squalor
prepared our parlor
which was so full of squalor
not worth a dollar
Sunset in the backstreets.
Coal and brick dust catches
small glimmers and sparks.
A cobbled together backyard
grows yet shorter shadows
a boy in kaki cloth
plays with a beat-up
red plastic fire truck.
Mother at the sink
her hands always scrubbing
a red raw living.
The boy looks up
to where a brief sunset fades
into the pale side of dark.
At a kitchen window
a mother rests her forehead
on its dirty pane, sighs
as the very worst part of town
drags itself deeper once more.
Poverty and rage is all he sees
in a furtive,doleful glance,
and the brightly-colored lights
cannot console the wretched soul
of his malnourished,shivering body:
bundled up in rags and visible to all
the hurriendly and careless passerbys,
who seem blind in their own pretense...
He rejects the mournful sounds
interfering with his needed sleep;
and yet,he lifts his drooping head
to peak around the wratful trees
to assure himself that
the wooden and metal shack
is well-secured and safe;
his numberless doubts delve deep...
In the middle of a furious February,
winter has failed to invite the generous sun
to warm up his frosty home so run-down;
an impoverished home in which he repulsed luck
that could have turned his life around;
his regret is an unremissible remedy:
consumed by a wishful valor
that ended in bitter squalor....