At five years old I asked my mother if Santa Claus gave the starving children
In Africa toys or food for Christmas
She blew off my questions like dust on a diamond
We all grew up mining for answers we wish we'd never found
In every corner of the world there are children counting their own bones
Their protruding ribs like number charts
Count 123 and you reach the heart
Which on emaciated children can actually be seen without x rays or metaphors
And I imagine it looks like a tiny hand curled into a fist
Knocking on a door that will never ever open
But I do not speak hunger
That lesson is not taught in schools where even the blackboards are white
I was born on a welcome mat beneath a porch light
I turned the knob once and was told I'd be safe inside for the rest of my life
But sometimes
I press my ear to the door and hear so much knocking outside
I swear the walls are gonna fall down around me
Hungry is a word sportscasters use to describe athletes who win trophies
Wearing shoes made by hungry children
Hungry are the top dogs on wall street says the news
But we have watched them eat heartbeats so we know their stomachs are not empty
Their hands are not hands that are empty begging
Sister, brother can you spare me a time when the wind scattered seeds and not ashes
This country's greed is blown across the bloated bellies of two year olds
From Brooklyn to Bagdad to Beijing
We sing our national anthem to the tune of dollar signs rising
From the bodies of the dead like fire works on the fourth of July
When they ask the little boy what hunger feels like he said
"It feels like my stomach is touching my back"
Supersize that America.
Stretch his spine from the ghetto to the world bank.
From Free Trade to that Last Full Tank and walk it like a fault line
Like a tightrope tied around the neck of a child who glues bottle caps to the bottom of his shoes
To tap dance dollars from the hands of tourists who don't even stop to think
Why does a five year old know how to play the blues?
And we choose – make choices that orchestrate symphonies of muffled screams
Of knee caps wider than thighs of lullabies sung to dead children
Through the cracked lips of mothers who knew bullets would be beautiful compared to this
Tiny fist knocking desperately on our doors
And this is more than the dollar we could or couldn't spare.
The way we are living slits the wrists of rising prayers
And we can only cut so many veins until the bleeding never ever stops
We cannot eat our tear drops he said.
We cannot eat our tears.
Can you see god's face from here? .
Eyes so full of despair they cry hurricanes and 50 foot Tsunamis
There are too many caskets the size of a mother's womb
There's too little in bloom
But I believe we'd have fewer secrets to keep
If we had to open that door and count those bones ourselves.
1.2.3. Protruding ribs like number charts
Tell me how high would we climb before we reached our hearts