Best Twenty Percent Poems
new nation to craft
founding fathers sought to draft
a declaration of independence
document that made sense
Thomas Jefferson sought to free slaves
but was warned not to make waves
five of thirteen colonies
he had to appease
breaking from British rule
ignited a duel
with each colonial delegate
expressing their regret
they could not sign
they would not find
all men of equal value
heated debate ensued
withdrawn from the declaration
with misgivings and trepidation
eighty-six more years would pass
until the slaves were freed at last
Lincoln paid a high price
when he acted against advice
signing an emancipation proclamation
brought civil war to a nation
twenty percent of our population
lay dead, a chilling affirmation
we failed to see what was right
every color worth as much as white
though the war is formally over now
discrimination we still allow
Talmadge Branch was just one case *
where service was denied by race
Ku Klux Klan remains active too
wounds once healed open anew
and the battle for human rights
fear and hatred still ignites
* In 2008, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth
had to take action against a bar in Perry, FL, when they
refused to serve African-American Talmadge Branch
unless he took a seat in a “back room.”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/florida-bar-owners-could-lose-license-over-racism-complaint
I lay in my hospital bed after giving birth, Could hear the murdering, raping
Hutus approaching my bed
My baby was no more. They ravaged me. Left me alive...........
Could hear the battle getting nearer
All I was worried about was my mother, Home alone...
My husband was away was he fighting, Was he alive......
Clutching my dead baby staggered towards home, The smell of blood filled the
air. Then I saw them, The valiant Tutu's, Fighting for us. here and now
The sound of machetes clashing together. Limbs flying through the air. Like
boomerangs.
The screaming ....The misery.......
When I staggered home. Found Mother in the water butt. Hiding from the
savages. She was alive and ok.. So traumatised
Many twisted bodies on the ground. Dragged them into a pile, trying to
remember who they were. To keep a record , for posterity. Poured paraffin over
them and cremated them. Praying for their souls
We buried the baby in the hard red earth. Couldn't cry, had no tears we were.in
shock......
Date was April 7th...
So tired, we slept. Hidden from view...
I am alive, my heart beating. Yet I feel dead. Dead inside....Why I ask myself.
Why is it happening....God only, knows.
Why?......
Penned 22/08/2014 for the Genocide Speak for the Lost contest.
I used 100 days slaughter of Rwanda.
You can see the skeletons of some of the twenty percent of the tutus that were
killed,
Can see the open mouth of the cry of pain. They have been kept. A reminder to
the future generation
April 7th is called Genocide Memorial Day, the week following is a national
mourning week.
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.
Waiting in line,
Before the ATM of closed banks for 60 Euros to withdraw under the scourging sun
Old and invalid people are submitted to this daily torture, constantly moaning, for Our country’s suffering and for our own devastation,
While twenty-seven percent the unemployment has climbed
Forty percent the salaries and pensions went down and twenty percent the taxes up
Rendering hundreds of thousands of families poor with no money to feed themselves And their children
When
Close to one hundred thousand of our countrymen have attempted suicide of whom Ten thousand, unfortunately, have succeeded in ending their lives only in five years Because of the ruinous austerity measures taken to pay Greece's lenders
Parthenon, is mourning Democracy's assassination in the place of its birth
By the mighty creditors that suck the blood out of our veins
The Greek government in agony has turn to our allies for help to restore our Economy and thus to prevent the catastrophe that is approaching,
But the creditors, most of them anyway, with Germany leading the way,
To obliterate Greece wish with their unbearable and inhuman terms they have set
As though were our enemies and not our partners, because
Humanity has been lost in their hearts and only for them the profit counts
And I, one of the suffering Greeks, that shares the same lot as any,
In anxiety, a few words try to arrange for the tragedy of Greece to illustrate as a New Euripides or Sophocles but to no avail,
So I am waiting in line under the scourging sun, hoping my turn to come,
The sixty Euros, if am lucky, to get into my hands before the AMT is empty!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
15 JULY 2015
Their numbers drawn, the backwards lottery
Almost none were aware they were playing
Assaulted by the poisons that save them
Hairless children with steroid-swollen cheeks
Feared stigmata of chemotherapy
Daily valiance, heroism unsought
Magic bullets are a relative thing
Modern wonder within the foulest curse
Not many years ago, a death sentence
Now, survival rate of eighty percent
It’s miraculous,
but if it’s your child
Then it’s a slow round of
Russian Roulette
Our own bullet burn unforgettable
Swelling in his eye, excised then regrown
For those of you playing along at home
Regrowth is a very ominous sign
Mucous Associated Lymphoma
Our newest demon, bane of our baby
Based on looks, it’s sixty percent likely
The microscope will have the final word
Sword of Damocles hangs
for six long weeks
As a succession of pathologists shrug
I can do the math much quicker than that
It’s sixty percent times twenty percent,
Probability times mortality
Twelve percent chance he will not live five years
Our sweet baby boy, turned budding young man
A gun with eight cylinders, one cartridge
Facts melt like lead into a bullet mold
Neither dead nor alive, Schrödinger’s cat,
His fate, an unseen quantum paradox
Not resolved until we open his box
And create life or death by witnessing.
Savoring the taste of each day as a
Maddening flavor of infinity
As we wait for a loud click or a bang
Finally the word arrives:
no cancer.
Spared, this fate of others,
no good reason
Not a part of God’s plan for us
this time
5/22/16
© Thomas W. Quigley
An empty bottle
leaves twenty percent guilt
and ten percent regret.
Paddi March
Philosophical
Have you ever heard of the eighty twenty rule
Well that was created for a lot of us fools
In a relationship you re only getting eighty percent
Of what you really need
Even though there are twenty percent out there
That might look good indeed
Stop and think are things really that bad
To perhaps jeopardize the best thing you ever had
Are things really that out of line
Where you can afford to throw away a dollar
Just to chase a dime
Is it worth trading the a simple life for a life of hell
Just because you thought you wanted a piece of tail
Yea temptation will catch your eye
That doesn’t means the grass is greener on the other side
So If you signed up to cherish honor and obey
You cant change your mind when something new comes your way
Maybe your relationship is not what you want it to be
But before you start another let that one free
And once you're out there you will see
Why there is so much space between eighty and twenty
That twenty might be great but think to yourself
Once that five minutes is over what do you have left
To late you're left crying thinking about the facts
How badly you wish you could get that eighty percent back
there will always be temptation from time to time
but don't throw away a dollar trying to chase down a dime
Alleys strewn with endless trash...
Discarded needles as broken glass
Shopping carts, these cornerstones
Of make shift homes; enslaved lives
Beaten hearts, grime clad children
Running wild; adorning downtown
Parks while suits pass by and sirens
Wail rushing past a starving dog; lines
Endless forming at the courthouse
Another day to pay these tickets ?
Jury pools overflowing; save the city
A model for her nation and aspiring
As unemployment declines towards
Twenty percent; Congress special
Session called from their highrise
Views an emergency you find to feed
The rich and famous and take up arms
To fight the Light this plight they cry
Can't you see as the gavel falls; here here.
coney island
bay parkway
prospect park
sheepshead bay
place eighty percent
of my ashes
where they were once
most happy
and twenty percent
mail to the IRS
return receipt
requested
The Income Tax Audit
By Elton Camp
Perry boasted how the IRS he so loved to cheat
But found that he should’ve been more discreet
When a neighbor notified the Internal Revenue,
The agency decided that an audit they would do
The examiner soon found Perry lived like a prince
His lifestyle of income tax fraud soon did convince
“Man, you can’t have reported all of your income.
Where did this mansion and limousine come from?”
Perry also had bragged of his enormous casino win
But he hadn’t thought that he should turn a dime in
Also income showed on his Social Security account
But on his 1040 he hadn’t reported the same amount
Clothes given to the Salvation Army he took deduction
But the value he reported needed some drastic reduction
To the church Perry claimed that he gave twenty percent
But the pastor reported it wasn’t even a place that he went
-In 2008, a massive recall of peanuts thought to be contaminated with bacteria occured. Not
very many people became ill, and only twenty percent of those that did were hospitalized.
Only a handful died. It was a media frenzy.-
Did you know?
Did You hear?
The tree nuts and peanuts have grown to sentience,
no longer willing to live beneath a primate jack-boot they have
armed themselves. They have
made a resolve.
Jihad!
Now they terror-bomb their opressors, strapping
ecoli and salmonella to their bodies and dying as heroes of the cause.
Now they strike their targets without discrimination, for
they are malicious little legumes, enemies
of red blooded A-mericans everywhere.
Never doubt their skill or persistant nature, or you could be next!
Yes, you!
Struck dead in your own home by these dangerous fundamentalists who are
intolerant by their very nature.
Now
they align themselves with pistachios and raw eggs, and
they plot their next series of attacks in their
cupboard terror-den caves.
Periodically, they
release threatening videos to fox news, declaring an
allout war on the morbidly obese. I for one
am terrified.
And there's more. Their
Leader, "Mr. Peanut" is pure evil in a monocle, tophat
spats and a cane. He smiles with
malevolence at the running camcorder, where he vows to
destroy all the rotund infidels, and all who
violate his brothers in arms whom cower on supermarket shelves.
If I had a sad broken heart
Not because you died dear
But that you chose another bride
Who's so limited I fear
She posseses only twenty
Percent and I eighty
Chosen in my youth gifted blessed
God prepared me for thee
Now that I'm aged unable to work
Not able to serve you
You seek a twenty percent girl
Unintelligent shrew
Wish you well in your endeavor
You're getting just desserts
Twenty percent's offerings small
So small just miniskirt
This one is based on 80/20 principle
This is not an original idea
I heard it in a sermon by T.D.Jakes
When a person marries, gets a new job,
or a new home, etc.., everything is great.
Then the new wears off and fault finding
begins..Nothing is a hundred percent
usually about twenty percent imperfections..
Thanks for the challenge:
HGarvey Daniel Esquire
Contest entry....
I want to spit when e'er I think
of how seniors are treated.
We worked and slaved all of our lives
and now we have been cheated.
We paid into the SS fund
throughout all our working years.
Now that it's time for some pay back,
Uncle Sam just looks and sneers.
The government has embezzled
(yes, that IS the proper word)
much of the money we put in;
I am sure that you have heard.
Our monthly checks are now so low
many struggle to survive,
to pay for food and health and heat
and merely to stay alive.
They say the cost of living's down,
so we do not need increase.
My water's up twenty percent.
Oh, when will this taxing cease?
The latest scam that they've employed
is reducing our food stamps.
I've never once had them go up,
'cause at cheating us they're champs.
People my age had "work ethic";
two words you now rarely hear.
Suggest to some kid that he work;
he'll just want to have a beer.
Ten years ago my income was
not quite half of poverty.
My SS's gone up ten percent
Now AT poverty's decree.
I could go on for endless time
of our shameful condition.
My generation built for today;
our future's under the gun.
Our vision must be accurate
We must see it for what it is
Social illness is not the cause
In truth it is the symptom
If this is accurate then it follows
No illness may be cured by passing a law
Would we pass a law against cancer?
Only by addressing the cause shall we cure
When you deny the foundation
And bolster the roof
The structure shall fall
History is proof
Ask a builder he’ll tell the truth
It is always the feet
Which give society balance?
Sadness, sadness they refuse to listen
And when told they refuse to listen
They refuse to listen
America the land of the free
Twenty percent in poverty
The answer to this in history
Oh _oh
Hold on it going to be a rough ride
I feel sick.
Feverish with chronic,
Long standing lung disease.
The governor here
Has mandated everyone
Wear a mask when they go out
In public.
Some people will have to wear it
24/7.
Makes it all that much harder
To breathe.
My name is not George..
My skin is not black ..
Yet how many times will I,
Today
Have to say
"I can't breathe."
I will count
Just for the heck of it.
More than twenty percent
Who die in hospitals,
Die from something they catch
In the hospital.
This is day five of
Mid to upper nineties
Two more days to go.
I have no air conditioning.
Perhaps it is only
Heat exhaustion,
What does it matter
When that is life threatening.
Dust storms in NV last night...