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Decay Of Innocence

We value Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation 3,
Over our ethics and the way the world should be.

Double quarter pounder, super sized coke and fries,
While Cambodians starve and children die.

We abuse our teachers and our schools,
While children slave on fields as labour tools.

This pen in my hand as I write this now,
Was manufactured by a child in a factory town.

We turn on the news; the new IPhone is here,
And we neglect the next segment of fatalities, famine and fear.

We are proud of our reputation; the fattest nation on earth!
While malnutrition plagues children from birth.

And we smoke our cigarettes and drink our beer,
Ignorant that we’re only bringing our own death near.

We permit factories to pump fossil fuels into the air,
Disregarding its effect: I don’t know… I don’t care.

Coral reefs die, Bush fires burn,
And mines empty the earth, while oil rigs churn.

We are devastated by Swine flu and the many that die,
Not shedding a tear, but for Michael Jackson we cry.

And sons of Palestine, bleeding in hospital beds,
Getting slaughtered by Israeli planes flying overhead.

We are aware of the economic crisis, feeling its pain,
However is it not conspicuous, we are to blame?

What will be of us once our IPods are broken, our pens write no more?
Once cigarettes, alcohol and drugs consume us all?

And long after the last corals are dead and forests burnt?
And long after fossil fuels plague the earth?

What’s done is done and we can’t change the past,
But the future is now and the future is us.

I was once the Cambodian hungry in my sleep,
I was once working in fields, blisters in my feet.

I was a child of malnutrition searching for food in an empty bin,
While others fuelled their addiction, on the streets, money in their tin.

I was once a child soldier at the age of ten,
And once worked in a factory to manufacture this pen.

I write this now not to boast or preach,
But to educate, inspire and to teach.

Equality is not a privilege, but a right to us all,
As is laughter for a child and playing football.

The sparkle in a child’s eye, the essence of innocence and to be gay,
Nothing should take that angelic nature away.

However neglecting the world, not looking beyond today,
Causes that innocence to decay.

poem by Basil Jaber (2009)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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