Hunger

a poem

Listen to an audio recording of Hunger:

Hunger in an empty belly
gurgles, growls, grows
from an ache into a hole
you can ignore for a few hours,
even live with for two to three months,
maybe suppress with a glass of water
unless there is no water
to be had.

Hunger, unsatiated, feeds
on the mind and cooks up
tantalizing thoughts of bread,
rice, meat, fat, sugar.
Hunger craves and obsesses,
driving the hungry, the sick, 
the weak and dizzy like dogs
into choked streets and ravaged fields,
digging through garbage heaps,
scrounging over rubble and debris,
scavenging for scraps, seeds, weeds,
any thing, dead or alive, to swallow,
any morsel to quell for a moment
the cries of wasting children
and limp babies.

Hunger, unabating, consumes
flesh, muscle, fatty tissue, organs.
Hunger picks brittle bones clean
like a pack of vultures, 
leaving only shreds of thin skin,
and bits of gristle and hair
for a shallow grave.
Hunger and the promise of food
lures the starving to their death 
in stampedes and targeted gunfire.
For flour, the hungry will pick
at the ground like chickens.
For food, in any form—
fresh, dried out, mouldy,
canned, wrapped or bagged—
the famished will trample,
steal, stab, fight and kill.

Hunger, unrelenting,
feasts upon the will.
Hunger gorges on dignity,
carves out the eyes
and swallows the light.
Hunger devours the soul. 
But it is not only the hunger 
for bread that dehumanizes;
it is the insatiable hunger
for blood, for land, for power,
for supremacy that turns
human beings into living carcasses.

Only hunger, ravenous
for justice and freedom
nourishes the heart
and keeps the spirit alive.

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