EVERYBODY KNOWS WHY THE CHILDREN ARE HUNGRY

EVERYBODY KNOWS WHY THE CHILDREN ARE HUNGRY

Everybody knows why the children are hungry.

Everybody knows why the poor give up dreaming

and the rich can’t sleep without surveillance.

Everybody knows why this young girl can’t read

and the Taliban throw acid in her face.

Everybody knows why this young boy

at twelve years old

feels about as heroic as a statistic

and looks at the future as if

he were already a has-been.

Everybody knows why there’s a rifle in his hand.

Everybody knows why

there are people washed up

on the streets of our cities

as if a great ship of state had gone down

like a garbage barge off the coast of New Jersey.

Everybody knows why

women are being sexually colonized

in the Democratic Republic of the mineral-rich Congo.

Everybody knows their atrocities

like serial killers and baseball cards.

You read a lot of existentialism

that prefers existence to essence

but you still find it hard to picture the abyss

that defines being as a special case of nothingness:

look into a dead child’s eyes

look into a dead child’s mind

look at what she cherished about life

like a cosmology all of her own

a myth of origin

a reason for stars

rejected by the metaphysics of the flies

that gather like punctuation marks all over her eyes.

Everybody knows

why the truth is veiled in spider-webs

that are maintained like political systems

who let the few who know how to spin silk out of their ass

eat everyone.

New eyes for old lamps

here comes this year’s candidates

like autumn to the ballot-box

like worms to a windfall of apples

to improve the lives of illegal immigrants

by privatizing concentration camps.

Everybody wants to stick their thumb in plum pudding

and say what a good boy am I

and everybody forgets who they stole it from

and everybody regrets that they didn’t get caught

in time to do it all over again

as they address themselves like greed

to a nation of gluttons

about what to do about the hungry

at the back door of the world

living on the leftovers

of liposuction clinics for the rich.

Three quarters of the world’s resources on your plate

taken out of other people’s mouths

and their children washing your table-cloth

to get the worst of the blood stains out

and you wonder why

you’re threatened by the fact

that people are hungry

and all they can see in your indifference

is their destiny.

Hate manipulates

the economics of fate

and the harvest moon is eclipsed

by the shadow of your dinner plate

all over the world tonight

as you go to bed full and happy

you’re rich enough to have values

that can be bought and sold

in a free market.

Hell’s reserved a table

in the dark corner

of an exotic place for you

that serves just those

who were exalted

by great all-consuming souls

that knew how to keep faith with a menu

that had children with cannibal soup on it.

And if hell doesn’t exist anymore

because so many atrocities have put it to shame

and peace is just another black hole

in the eye of an approaching hurricane

then may your soul be subjected

to the same vicious clarity

that cooked the books

like bestsellers in heaven

that always had a happy ending

like a tax return on charity.

The Holy Ghost was first

a Greek lawyer

a paraclete

an advocatus

someone who would speak up for you

who would intercede on your behalf

after you died

and went before

Rhadamanthus Anubis God or provincial court

to see if there was a feather’s-weight of good in you.

Now the Holy Ghost is a campaign manager

for a Christo-Fascist rightwing conservative think tank

with the i.q. of a snakepit

running for the office of God

by denouncing charity

as a socio-economic liberal fraud

and a green policy in Eden

as the beginnings of a police state

that will take away your right

to be psychopathically delusional about clarity.

Granny Smith Macintosh or Golden Delicious

Satan invited Eve

to take a big bite out of the apple

just for a little variety

but the neocon Nazis have taken it

a step further than that

and stuffed themselves

like maggots

into the vicious crabapples

they’ve stewed under the crust

of their North American piety

like a taste of downhome cooking you can trust.

But trust me

they’re lick-spittle mud vacuums

that will be spit out

like something nature abhors.

Everybody knows why the children are hungry.

There are people in the world

whose values are the apple cores

of a trickle-down economy

that begrudges the poor even that.

Everybody knows that the game is fixed

and elections are Mexican pinatas

beaten to a pulp at the ballot box

to keep foreigners out of our customs

like the roots of strange lands out of our food.

Everybody knows

why the world is a dangerous place

and the only thing our children can do

is stick needles in their arms

to stay out of harm’s way.

Everybody knows why the old

are left to die alone without dignity

in a world where experience

is a kind of psychological abuse

and wisdom the chronic ambiguity of a victim.

I see a war.

Between those

who have nothing to lose

and the darlings of superfluity

who live off the rest of everything

that belongs to everyone else.

Nasty guerrilla gunboat wars

like blood clots in the collective unconscious

ignited by true believers

on both sides of the fence

with the spontaneity

of improvised explosive devices

and the apocalyptic insights of fanatical drones.

More bang for the buck.

More corporate spin

for those who don’t give a damn.

Everybody knows why the planet feels

like a sexually assaulted woman

with no shelters or restraining orders

to hear her appeals for help.

We shut our mouths like doors.

We close our eyes like windows.

We stuff our ears with loud music

to keep from hearing

how she screams our names out loud

as if there were still some heroes left

among all her shameless children

that weren’t legendary

for their sins of omission.

The planet is one body.

The planet is one mind.

If your little toe gets gangrene like Somalia

and you do nothing about it

given time for the disease to progress

California will go blind

and Tokyo go into cardiac arrest.

If a child loses an eye

that’s one less star in the sky

for the lost to find their way back by.

If a student is killed for an idea

by the Neanderthals of creationism

standing up for a time-honoured ice-age

against the proponents of global warming

that’s proof that humans

were created in the image of God

like a missing link in the brain drain of evolution

that never flushes the think-tank

after it’s done its business

like other species that have gone extinct

abusing their own awareness.

But I’ve got a way out of the argument.

It isn’t evolution or creationism

that governs the direction of events

among all living things on the planet.

It’s eliminationism.

Murder in the name of self-defense.

Genocide in the name of purifying the race.

Theft in the name of giving back.

Lying as a way of upholding the truth.

Rape as a way of making love.

Iron pyrite as the standard of the Golden Rule.

Do unto others before they do unto you.

Jesus overthrew the benches

of the money-lenders in the temple.

The Vatican’s got a bank.

Wisdom as the think-tank of the fool.

When the meaning of life is insignificant

so is its lack of meaning too.

Compassion as heartfelt as a foreign policy.

Desecration as the true aesthetic of celebrity.

Horror takes a short-cut to fame

and leaves the long way home to the hero.

War as a way of imposing peace.

Starvation poverty disease clean water air and arable land

beaten like old ploughs

into the new weapons

of a corporate arsenal.

Nike owns the rain in Bolivia

and Coca Cola’s

the corporate Magna Carta of Belize.

You’re the nobody everybody’s watching

like the someone they should be afraid of

who’s watching you.

Profligate variety the vacillating substitute for choice.

The bride wore black at the wedding

to celebrate her marriage to an oilslick

like moonlight that landed a big eclipse

and the mutant sex life of a polluted fish.

There’s honey in the orchards that broke their vows

and money in doing what you hate

for the best of reasons.

One half the world is grass.

The other half is grazers.

There are children who suckle

at their dead mothers’ breasts

like Hathor the cosmic cash-cow

when she crashed on Wall Street

like a fall in the price of meat.

The promised land of milk and honey

is a profit margin on the edge of the sea

looking for big returns on its spiritual dividends.

The ends don’t justify the means anymore.

The means are the ends.

Like the children

that are dynastically slaughtered

to keep Herod from having bad dreams

about the birth-rate of immaculate Palestinian virgins.

Lord won’t you send me an M-16.

My friends all have Mausers

and AK-47s.

The conspiracy theorists

of the justifiably paranoid

look at a tree

and see an underground arboreal organization.

The crazy try to keep the mad from going insane.

Everyone’s dining with Claudius on poison mushrooms.

Nero waits in the wings

like the Elvis Presley of emperors

and sings of all the things

he’s going to do to the Christians

with a blast from the past

and a little number

he took from the beast

that rose to six six six on the charts

for drowning their children

and drinking the blood of a god

who rose from the dead on the third day

like Marianne Faithful making a comeback.

And everybody knows why the children are hungry.

Everybody knows the big bad wolves

caught up to their toes

and blew their house down

and ate them like little piggies.

Everybody knows where the cradle crashed

and how many millions of children there were on board

when the wind blew the treetops out like candles.

But everybody plays dumb and mute and stupid

and says they’re still looking for the black box

to determine what caused the tragedy

and possibly in the future

make sure that it won’t probably happen again.

Everybody knows there are maggots in Armani suits

pimped out like butterflies

to misrepresent themselves to the people

in the voice of an experienced apple

who knows how to make the hard choices

when it gets down to taking a bite out of the budget.

Corruption always persecutes virtue

for falling into fiscal arrears

when it should have known

like any good snakeoil salesman

it just couldn’t keep up

with the luxurious lifestyle of its tears.

Mirrors within mirrors within mirrors

and not one them bright enough

to reflect the dark truth

of why children just hundreds of miles away

from a supermarket and a health plan

look like the fossils of pterodactyls

in the last stages of late Triassic starvation.

All skin and bones

with big eyes like bat kites

tangled in the powerlines

of the economic spider grid of a world

that separates the flies

the gods kill for sport

from the bureaucrats and politicians

that deny any knowledge of their crimes

in a marsupial court

where everyone else

is in everyone else’s pocket.

Wanton boys pull the wings off the fly.

The fly kills them with germs.

Everybody knows why their heart squirms

when they shake out the garbage can

like a cornucopia full of worms

that have grown fat and chubby as commas

on the flesh of illiterate children

that didn’t live long enough

to learn to count the dead

without using their fingers and toes.

The tooth fairy’s turned into a terrorist

that puts homemade explosives

under the pillows of stone

the children lay their heads down on

shaking in their deathbeds

to scream in their dreams about things

that were better left unsaid.

Everybody knows why the damage to our children

is always a collateral

and never a capital offense.

A prosthetic footnote to a roadside bomb.

A small pale blossom of a face

in the cosmic expanse

of an adult-sized tomb

that casts monstrous shadows

on the walls of the room

she sleeps alone in

without any sign from heaven

that anyone knows she’s dead.

All her lucky stars

swept like tragic dust under the bed

where she’s hiding

from everyone who knows why

and doesn’t come looking.

PATRICK WHITE