Her yellowed eyes weren't blinking,
despite so very many crawling flies,
seen to be covering her stilled face,
nor did she hear the fearful cries,
of the many other children around her,
as they all lay weak and forlorn,
and we all knew that many more voices,
would be stilled before the new day's dawn.
Those swollen bellies of oedema, cruelly deceive the eye,
malnourished as they are, yet still so very rotund,
a mean trick upon those who have so little protein,
their stick thin legs and arms lying limp and moribund.
Meanwhile back in our big cities, the bins bulge too,
with waste food that would have saved lives in the right place,
and people are dying with obesely swollen bellies and chaffed thighs,
would they not have wished they had instead, fed some distant face?
Maybe in the future, will we learn to balance all we do,
and let all the world know we are but one human race,
ready to spend less on the baubles that the ad men push so hard,
as a new day's dawn for all would be a gift of grace...
©Rhumour
November 4th 2010
Edited September 2nd 2012
Categories:
oedema, child abuse, children, corruption,
Form: Rhyme
Loving Grandparents
I've seen more faces of parental love
As a child I heard folk lore from grandma
Often I lay calm in her elbow's cove
Night pressed her feet swollen with oedema
And in the noon we would hide in a room
With a binoculars to watch the birds
Collecting twigs for nesting babes in womb
Grandma was fun and all requests were heard
Grandpa moved around with his wailking stick
We took care of him on his pious bed
Didn't know he was dying thought him sick
In the middle of night goodbye he said
We hugged and cried at our world that collapsed.
New homes we were flown to, our ties just snapped
FOURTH
October 29, 2015
Contest: In The Name Of Love
Sponsor: Shadow Hamilton
Categories:
oedema, bird, childhood, fun, goodbye,
Form: Sonnet
The weekly bus that carries
the old ones from the village
to do their weekly shop
fills with shaken umbrellas
and eager tales of morbidity.
You know those water tablets
that Jane’s been taking for her blood?
Well they’ve affected her kidneys now,
and she’s got oedema.
You should see her ankles:
like balloons, they are.
The rain has stopped, the sun
dazzles the seats around me,
warming the air and our faces;
beads glisten down the windows;
the driver hums a tune;
the journey smiles.
Janet found a growth –
it turned out benign but
she fell and broke her wrist.
I’m doing her shopping.
And as for Billy’s verruca . . . Well!
The sun has failed to shun
the cloudy conversation,
gives up, ushers back the rain.
Rain is happy here: cheer is so obviously
no substitute for this bus-time babble.
Sickness over health is preferred.
I push my earphones further in,
crank up the volume and enjoy
that radio hospital drama
I downloaded yesterday.
Categories:
oedema, death, fear, journey, life,
Form: Free verse