Best Sweatshops Poems
We’re complaining about life and throwing food away,
But there’s nearly 800 million people going hungry in the world today.
Over 150 million children involved in child labour worldwide,
And Innocent people are being killed right now due to genocide.
More than 80 million working in hazardous conditions,
While women in the middle-east are victims to old-age traditions.
Celebrities in restaurants paying a hundred dollars for a dinner,
While kids in third world countries just keep getting thinner.
More than twenty percent of children in Asia and Africa are underweight for their age,
And some are so malnourished, you can actually see their rib cage.
Kids in sweatshops are paying the ultimate price,
Just so we can wear fancy Nike merchandise.
They’re digging for coltan in the Congo while being worked to the bone,
So think about that when your texting on your blackberry phone.
And how can you be happy with the world that we’re living in?
When people are getting murdered due to the colour of their skin.
We need to break down racial barriers because we all breathe the same air,
We need to show more respect for each other and learn how to care.
Human life is worth more than paper but some are obsessed with greed.
Life is about caring for each other, so why take more than we need?
We can still be happy without materialistic treasures,
It’s time to wake up and relish small pleasures.
We are all the same, we are all equal,
We are all human, we are all people.
So why can’t we all work together and try to live peaceful,
We’re only here once, in life there’s no sequel.
I’m trying not to get emotional but it’s just too tough,
Humanity please wake up, enough is enough.
Love to the USA
Sweatshops in Haiti
Twenty machines in row
Sewing T- shirts that say
I LOVE the USA
12:23 noon 7/ 6/ 2013
granddaughter brings home from 4th July parade bobbles, candy & t-shirt made in Haiti saying
I love USA. That was the Olympics as well as a lot of things .
Our Smoldering Factory Town
free trade, a brick around
It’s gurgling, swollen neck. Surrounding
gray quiet smolder, evokes,
Once thriving factory smoke
A Crumbling horoscope
once paid it's worker's, soaked
in quiet desperation.
We are it's rusty antiques
sinking ships on outsourced seas
a swollen, bailout casualty
a fallow field, a dustbowl breeze
While children sew our sneakers
In bananna sweatshops, cheaper
hands can make, children's fate
wont matter, they'll dig deeper.
Flames lick the sole of my foot
Immersions of melting soot
Reagents are called and are few
Engaging sweatshops of New
The intensifying heat
Can only touch darkness seeps
Three in a day they say
Unbound walking around gay
The fire raged in intense anger
A blue ignited inside the framer
And a fire begins eating fire
All is consumed volted wire
Count its worth when the smoke sees
Tender grass puts forth its leaves
The smell
What is that smell? Can’t you tell,
It’s just some tory twit,
Crawling up to the masters well,
To see if he can fit,
They whinge an whine about the time,
When we all worked for naught,
Unions got us money fine,
But then, greed for cheap was thought,
So the rich Hoggy went offshore,
Sweatshops in Asia still,
Greedy piggy he wants more,
Exploit the poor he will,
A hundred thousand workers came,
Cheap labor in our land,
Get em cheap, overseas the same,
The poor are in demand,
So vote for your master,
The one who despises you ,
Cheap labor for-ever after,
Till eternity does spew…
Don:}
One-eighty billion dollars one man has, they say.
It is outrageously obscene when once you know
half the global populace earns two bucks a day.
Due to lack of healthcare; they have no way to pay;
ten-thousand people every day will die, although
one-eighty billion dollars one man has, they say.
While one percent dine happily and put away
three-thousand dollar bottles of the best Bordeaux;
half the global populace earns two bucks a day.
The underpaid, poor women, who have no gateway
to education; stuck in sweatshops, they just sew.
One-eighty billion dollars one man has, they say.
"We can't afford the taxes" all the rich; they bray
they lobby, legislate to keep it all, and so
half the global populace earns two bucks a day.
Humans have capacity; to this all allay
it's twenty twenty-four for pity's sake, yet lo;
one-eighty billion dollars one man has, they say;
half the global populace earns two bucks a day.
JUSTICE
They stare out at us unsmiling
from tintypes of the first photographs,
from the tea-colored pictures
of thin, ragged immigrants, huddled
in cold bare rooms in tenements,
children clinging, dazed and frightened,
their paltry belongings tied in scarves.
They look out from pictures of dreary pioneers,
in front of sod houses without windows,
from grim photos of old, weary children
working in the mills and sweatshops
of the early nineteenth century.
We weep for the thousands who died
of poverty and disease and tell ourselves
how wonderfully the world has changed,
how we now can have fresh fruits
and a variety of vegetables year ‘round,
how there are miracle medicines
to keep us healthy and cure illnesses,
how homes are better built and heated,
Self-righteously, we smile at each other
while legislators we keep electing,
like the mill owners of old,
line their pockets greedily as they deny
raising the minimum wage to a living wage,
while they have the best health care,
paid for by the taxes of the many, but
vote to deny it to those whom they represent,
while they buy the finest of foodstuffs
and vote to cut allowances for food stamps.
Greed and hypocrisy still rule,
and we sit on our sofas with our blindfolds on
continuing to vote for lawmakers
who only care for their own elite,
scorning the poor, the ill, and the indigent
who often work at slave wages
to provide them with all that they have.
We pride ourselves on justice,
but, in reality, there is no justice.
that
silken gown
when pressed hard
against the nostrils
one is assailed by
the sweat of child labour
he is just eleven and not in school
when other children are in school
the poor child labours away at the sweatshops
under the watchful eyes of the masters who wield whips
think, the next time you wear that gown, of child labour.
11/9/21
If I crossed the line
Then I apologize
Almost lost my mind
A lot of times
Mental and physical battles being fought
Still lost
Smoking pot
And drinking lots
Another day and night went by, I forgot
What I wrote and did before the lights went off
(Knock, knock, knock)
Get yo' ass up, I got
A job to do at a far away spot
Never late, always on the dot
To the table a lot
Was brought
I did some teaching and also was taught
In casual wear or while wearing a smock
Gave me a key to the building, so I could lock
It all up, making sure everything was solid as a rock
Often I had to collect my thoughts
And connect the dots
For now I need a Glock
And a yacht
Not to ever watch the clock
Ceasing to stop
Therefore I paid the price
More than twice
At what cost
Otherwise it is all for naught
Continuing to plot
Many quick to squawk
Others partake or just sit and watch
Like a hawk
Because they intend to stalk
By now, it should come as no shock
Wake up, don't scoff
And think you got it all, because you do not
A world that talks
And gawks
Far too oft
Many mock
And quickly flock
Built off of slave labor and sweatshops
It's non-stop
A world obsessed with onslaught
Quick to pull the trigger and fire a shot
Obsessed over symbols like a cross
And any cash crop
Obsessed with hitting the jackpot
Yet some things can not be bought
Use me as an example.
Floating on sea's of vanishing waters ,
soaked up by those who care not for the amount of pollution tossed in to it.
It's importance ignored for profit.
Use me as a sponge soaking up oil polluted lake's,
saving aquatic wildlife from suffocating slowly.
A diamond in the ruff covered by the glam of fashion,
forgetting the slave trade's used to harness it.
Clothing line's forgotten due to the sweatshops used to give it it's fame.
A fair exchange ends up not quite the same.
It's never what you meant when it's time to explain.
When it come's time to change.
The growth of tree's important for me to breath,
cut down for me to use breaths expressing thoughts seen by me or expressed unto me.
Killing off nature selfishly,
for materialism unable to be taken by me from this earth when I leave.
60% of the world wealth
is owned by Billionaires
Which leaves
the rest of the world
To function on
forty percent
of the world's wealth,
"getting a rich man into heaven"
Is like trying to get
a camel through
the eye of a needle
because with wealth
Gods expectation grows
your job is to take care of the poor
your wealth becomes a barrier
between you and God
It becomes more important
to be wealthy
than it is, to care about people
to make a profit
you'll build human sweatshops
making people work
for eighteen to twenty hours a day
people sleeping on the floor
because they have no life
but need money
wages so low
you make the excuse
If I didn't do it
somebody else would
we go to the shops
and pick up a teeshirt
for prices that are
next to nothing
well our shops go under
because they can't compete
people buy off the internet
because their prices are cheaper
and they have more variety and style
well our shops shut down
Self-interest rules the world
supermarkets talk about technology
where the supermarkets of the future
have no check out workers
in twenty years they say
Robots will replace
38% of the workplace
Economies will fail
Unless people make changes
Economies are collapsing now
because shops need customers
just because we invent something
Doesn't mean we have to use it
people could buy Australian
made products
but instead, they try to save that dollar
Just because
we invented the internet
doesn't mean we have to keep it
we all have the ability
to turn off the machines
and go back to meeting people
with more customers in shops,
shops might be able to improve styles
The head of a gargoyle
rests in one hand
the scent of olive oil
aloft in the wind
While elves make mischief
in sweatshops subterranean
guilt storms man's conscience
'gainst backdrops Notre Damian
My people are shipwrecks,
they have faces long crushed by tanks.
Many are landlocked,
a few were too oceanic
they got broken by dry-docked hearts.
Most were blitzed by smokescreens.
The trees and industrial units
are so tightly packed,
that snow can only fall
in thin shafts of squeezed daylight.
You can get silenced or dead in those
cold spotlights.
At the edge of the cut lumber
yearlong tractors unearth muskets
discarded by the few who held fast
only to retreat to boneyards and sweatshops.
The unauthorized have been
censured and cancelled,
mute now the people hide their souls.
We took a road much travelled,
a stream of masked riders escaping,
it was a mad rush
to keep up with the fear.
When we got there, we could only
mill about like sheep behind the razor wire.
My people peer form the margins,
form tented tribes native to junkyards and jetsam.
They are washed up as shoreless wreckage,
gaunt reminders of all things forgotten.
They dream of that slim peninsular.
They dream-walk to the end of its long pier,
grasp the last flimsy rail
that keeps them safe from
the past and the future.
An ancient cycle of storms pounds them,
pounds that rickety quay
as it finger-points to nowhere.
The sea slaps their faces,
until they cannot stand, but must sit
inside their open mouths,
be just funnels
for the unrelenting winds
of dark times.
(Medley: My Countries 'Tis O Thee)
My countries misery
creeps and all losers be
of thee, I cringe
And where our fathers lied
and pilgrims took their hide
numb every mouth inside
... with the syringe
The natives can't be free
and nobody can flee
my aim right on
Guided by box of tricks
white hoods all pedophiles
shot with their fractured ribs
high caliber
Sweat oozing felonies
corrupt authorities
asylums for
Their morals run away
regret that either take
sweatshops where riots break
noose round swan song
And where our fathers lied
and pilgrims took their hide
numb every mouth inside
... with the syringe.