On the one hand we have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable? But on the other hand let us look at the issue of dependency where we have trapped people in poverty through the extent of welfare that they have.
quote by David Cameron
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The Impact Of Poverty On Education
THE IMPACT OF POVERTY ON EDUCATION.
INTRODUCTION
There are so many different tools that have been thought relevant in people’s developmental projects both at individual and societal levels. Education is one of such practical tools. Importantly to note, there are also various meanings that denote the broad term ‘education’. In this essay, however, we are mainly interested in defining formal education since our discussion will dwell much on it. According to Nwomonoh (1998) , formal education is the process of gaining knowledge, attitudes, information and skills during the course of life especially at school.
Though education is said to be so instrumental in human development but also in the revamping of world economies, it is very unfortunate that education systems, world wide, are being held to ransom all because of poverty at both governmental and household levels. According to Thibault (2009) , poverty means the shortage of common things such as food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, all of which determine our quality of life. It may also include lack of access to opportunities like education and employment which aid the escape of poverty.
Problems in our society are interconnected in one way or the other, just like poverty and personal family problems affect a student’s capability to learn. Improving education entails improving the living conditions of students. Having in mind that education is basically responsible for the development of many countries including Malawi, as the back ground suggests, we cannot afford to bypass such a vital element without a mention. Considering also the fact that poverty is one of the forces that come in the way; blocking the success of education, we feel it rational to look at how the two realities, education and poverty, affect each other both positively and negatively. That is also why we are convinced that this topic is worth studying. Our awareness of this source, poverty, and its impact on education will enable us devise some proper measures of intervention with the hope of minimizing the negative impact of poverty on education. This point, in short, explains the purpose of our investigation and why we are so passionate in getting into this research. During the whole discussion we are being guided by two questions thus, ‘does poverty really affect education? And if it does, what points do we have on the positive and negative impacts of poverty on education? ’
METHODOLOGY
The study was basically qualitative in approach because of the nature of the issue that was being addressed. This was the case because the issue of how poverty affects education, both positively and negatively is particularly very difficult to predict the conclusions without penetrating into the core of the issue. For instance, one may unreasonably rush into concluding that poverty affects education negatively only and we cannot even dare to speak of poverty affecting education positively. The study was conducted in three schools namely; Mulunguzi, Masongola and Chirunga Private Secondary schools in Zomba district between 24th April and 3rd May. In this research we used both government and private funded schools to have a more balanced result on how poverty affects formal education in these different institutions. The information required for the study was collected through group interviews of form three students and individual interviews with teachers using semi-structured interview schedules. We opted to use these interviews in the first place because we felt books are more theoretical whereas a field research is practical and it involves real life experiences. Nevertheless, we still used desk research as a supplementary source of information and for clarity in some areas.
RESULTS
Positive impacts of poverty on education
To begin with, poverty encourages one to get educated and of course work hard in class. This is because the problems faced due to poverty are very serious and therefore students who are from poverty stricken families strive to end the problems and one of the best solutions is through education. That is to say, if a person, for instance, due to poverty, is taking just a meal in a day instead of three meals, and again if he/she is sometimes sleeping on an empty stomach, he/she will resort to education bearing in mind that if he/she gets educated they will secure formal employment and eventually be able to make ends meet for themselves as well as fending for their families.
Not only does poverty encourage one to get educated, but also it helped in the introduction of free primary education. In Malawi, for instance, when Bakili Muluzi became president, he introduced free primary education and he had eliminated the requirements for school uniform forthwith (Kadzamira & Rose,2001) . This had increased the access to education dramatically as those pupils who were coming from less privileged families were also given access to this free primary education. It should also be noted that the free primary education system was not only implemented to fulfill an electoral pledge but also bearing in mind that some families were not able to send their children to school due to poverty. Free primary education was there to deal with illiteracy by reducing families’ direct costs of education. Again due to the influx in the number of pupils in primary schools; there was a lack of teachers. Sonani (2002) , testifies that the Ministry of Education re-employed all retired teachers below the age of 65. This also meant that the once retired teachers got back to their source of income which helped them support their families as well as hauling the economy of the country. The implementation of free primary education system in Malawi forced the government to provide infrastructures so as to accommodate the large number of pupils in these schools. Simply put, poverty had led to the introduction of free primary education which means that more children are going to school, and again more teachers are being trained and getting employed and finally the construction of school blocks culminating into infrastructural development, all these branching from poverty.
We may also look at poverty from a positive angle bearing in mind that when a country is poor more funds and donations come into it. These funds and donations are also given to the education sector to build new infrastructures and in the maintenance of already existing ones in the sector. These privileged countries also provide learning materials to schools that are poor as a result students in these less privileged schools perform well in accordance with the amount and quality of the learning materials that they have been provided with. For instance, a United States based non governmental organization known as “Water for People” handed over 44 water toilets they built to Chimwankhunda primary school. The school toilet facilities had been vandalized 11 years ago but because of poverty the school could not renovate them (Gausi,2007) .
In addition, these funds and donations help more people to get educated. This is so because people can use funds as school fees, pocket money and buy stationery. The donations may include library books, chairs and writing materials. These can make a conducive environment for one to learn since there will be enough facilities at the school. For instance, with funding from the “United States Agency for International Development” (USAID) ,3,300 needy Malawian primary school girls are being funded. They are being provided with food, clothing, school supplies and hygienic products like soap and body lotion (Muhaliwa,2005) . Likewise,500 pupils at Katoto primary school in Mzuzu no longer sit on the floors during lessons courtesy of Southern Bottlers Limited and Lions Club of Limbe. Before these funds and donations, pupils used to sit on the floor due to scarcity of desks. These donations improved the pupils’ school attendance in such a way that pupils have started going to school regularly.
In the same line, a needy student can be given a scholarship to go further with his/her education. In this case the scholarship is given to the person just because he/she cannot manage to pay school fees on her own. This in turn benefits the needy person and the community at large. In this situation poverty has assisted in the development of education in an area by beckoning funds and donations from rich countries and organisations.
Further more; in most cases poverty facilitates one’s ambitions to attain formal education. It becomes easier for a poor child to put much of his concentration on education as compared to a rich child. This is because a poverty stricken student will have less destructive materials for entertainment. He/she will also have less or no money to indulge him/herself in activities that require spending a lot of money for instance, drinking beer. Sometimes even if the child can find money he/she can buy basic needs and not just spending it anyhow. Contrast to this a rich child may obtain things like ipods, mp3s, games for entertainment. These things in most cases destruct the concentration of students in their studies. As a result, one’s class performance is negatively affected since most of his/her time is being spent on entertainment.
Negative impacts of poverty on education
Just as a coin has got two sides, a head and a tail, poverty also, apart from having positive impacts on education, it does have negative impacts on the same. We have talked much about the positive face of poverty on education. We shall surely do ourselves injustice if we do not look at the negative part. In spite of the fact that poverty has an impact on education that is worth complimenting, we cannot afford in this discussion to overlook the point that so many students have been forced to leave the corridors of learning institutions due to the same poverty. One of the reasons that force some students leave the learning institutions prematurely is pregnancy, which in most cases, come because of poverty. It is almost common knowledge that a good number of students who come from poor families wish they could be sailing in the same boat with those who come from well to do families as far as luxurious life is concerned. The poor students constantly feel that there is something missing at the core psychologically. With this feeling in their minds, they tend to regard themselves as incomplete and not accepted socially. Consequently, they envy the rich students and squarely want to posses the things that are associated with the rich students. Very unfortunate that the poor students’ parents cannot afford to fulfill their children’s desires like what the rich parents would provide. Because the pull towards recognition is too strong for the poor students to resist, they end up in indulging themselves into prostitution in their search for money. Pity indeed that instead of recreating, as anticipated, their promiscuous behavior sees most of them getting pregnant and for some very unfortunate ones get even HIV and other STIs. From this discussion, commonsense convinces us that this school dropp out due to pregnancy is one of the negative impacts of poverty on education.
Adding more flesh to this discussion, we can also appreciate that hunger has been so instrumental in bringing down the standards of education world wide, in general, and Malawi, in particular. Frankly speaking, there are very few students if not none, who concentrate on their studies on empty stomachs. Food is one of the basic needs that every person is obliged to have if he/she is to survive. It is not surprising, therefore, to see some students performing miserably in class simply because they have not taken enough food or they have taken none altogether. The question of hunger finds its way into the education system because the government has failed to provide adequate food in most of its boarding schools. This is poverty at governmental level. There are also some students who are not boarders but still endure the hostile reality of hunger right in their homes. This is due to poverty at household level. It is sad that poverty, both at governmental and household level, has helped in engineering the deteriorating of education standards in Malawi.
Bearing in mind that it is only the eagle that can tell us the real whisper of a cloud, we visited Masongola Secondary school with the hope of getting first hand information from the students and their teachers since they are the ones who mostly benefit or get destructed by poverty. The Masongola secondary school students and their teacher, Mr. Enock Abraham, testified to us during an interview that government’s inability to provide extra food, apart from the usual beans that the institution offers, has seen many students developing ulcers. It would sound bizarre to reason that one can attend classes whilst he/she is on a hospital bed battling with ulcers. The Masongola students further testified that most poor students who have ulcers just bow down out of the race of learning because they cannot afford to buy extra food whenever the institution is serving the students beans.
This pitiful development goes beyond the boundaries of Masongola secondary school. Mulunguzi secondary school as Mr……the head teacher at the institution testifies, has not been spared from the scourge of school dropp outs simply because the school has not been able to provide extra or adequate food to students who cannot take what their friends take on health grounds. Needless to say this leaves the education standards in Malawi vacillating. It is a pity that though we have wrestled with this question of poverty a dozen times, we have not been successful in the battle. At one point in time, the government attempted to minimize the chances of school dropout in primary schools through its provision of porridge to pupils in the junior section. This attempt was in itself a good gesture but the government has failed to implement the initiative further in other schools that up to now have not benefited from the program.
It may not sound an exaggeration if we may say poverty has also forced a good number of students to give up their hopes of getting educated simply because they find it so difficult traveling to and from their respective schools. Lack of transport means, in short, has pushed them well towards the blink of despair as far as attaining formal education is concerned. This point speaks for itself how poverty can sometimes work on the education’s disadvantage.
As we go further with this discussion, we also appreciate the fact that the problem that mostly hinders a student’s success is inadequate resources that include; few teachers and learning materials. It must be highlighted that these problems are not only in developing countries but they may also find their way in reasonably developed countries like South Africa. In a developing country like Malawi, the education system encounters these problems because of the government’s failure to look into problems of infrastructure, capacity and availability of teaching and learning materials (Nkawike,2005) . The Muluzi government did a little if any; in as far as infrastructure is concerned. Lack of school blocks facilitated by a large number of pupils due to the introduction of the free primary education in 1994, forced pupils to have lessons under trees. In 2003, for example, lack of school blocks resulted in a tragedy at Nkomachi in Lilongwe when a tree fell onto an outdoor class, resulting in injury and deaths of pupils (Mvula & Chanika,2004) . This problem of learning materials continues till date, in all levels of the education system. According to Abraham (2009) , the school has always had shortage of learning blocks to an extent that the Physical Science and Biology laboratories are used as classrooms. There is also great shortage of books in all departments, and some departments like the technical department needs new equipment and current books which are very expensive. With this unfortunate situation we cannot anticipate good performance from Masongola secondary school.
In order to deal with these issues, the Muluzi government thought it wise to disregard the provision of learning materials in schools. Instead the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) pass mark was reduced to ensure the success of students in their examinations. Even the director of Basic Education, Nelson Kaperemera admitted that funds intended for learning materials were servicing the debts of government at the expense of improving quality education. Instead of reducing the pass mark, the government and other stake holders should strive to improve quality of education, improve teacher salaries, and provide adequate materials and train teachers properly (Malawi News,2006) .
In developing countries like Malawi, the schools are understaffed (teaching personnel) and they tend to be handling a large number of students for long hours. Furthermore, the teachers are subjected to meager salaries, which are even made late. The government does not seem to have the welfare of teachers at heart, for instance the education Manager for Phalombe, Enoch Ali says the district is facing a dire shortage of teachers, a situation that is contributing to low education standards. The teacher pupil ratio in Phalombe is 1: 120, whilst the recommended ratio is 1: 60 (The Nation,2006) . Due to low pay teachers resort to organizing part time classes, which demand an extra amount of money on top of the normal fees. These changes clearly affect those students who come from very poor families, as they do not receive adequate studies because of lack of money.
This does not only occur in secondary schools, but it also happens in universities. As the academic staff of the Universities go on strike because of the government’s reluctance to increase their salaries. One considers how this is supposed to retain staff in the University. As a result lecturers spend more time doing consultancies; instead of preparing lectures and doing University mandated research. If we are serious about fighting poverty, formal education is the hub of ideas to fight these problems by improving its standards (Kapasula,2008) .
Child labour is one of the major problems that contribute to school dropp out. The majority of child labour victims are children who are living in poverty. This is so because they lack basic needs, for this reason they are forced even against their will to do any kind of work in order to gain financial wealth. This, therefore, affects school attendance. Evidence of school dropp out due to child labour is found in central region where most children are being employed in estates. This region has high tobacco production. Since this crop demands a lot of work, children are at high demand because they do not claim high wages compared to adults. Research, therefore, showed that the percentage of children attending schools is lower compared to that of northern and southern region (Nyirongo,2004) . We have the case of two brothers aged between 12 and 15 who were forced to work at a tobacco farm at Mpherembe in Kasungu district, where they were receiving 150 kwacha a day due to poverty (Namangale,2005) . We can see that child labour has a great impact on education because through it, a lot of children are being deprived of their right to education as they spend most of their time working.
In addition to that, Chirwa (2003) found out that child labour is also taking place in people’s houses. In this case children are forced to dropp out of school either by parents or on their own, to work in neighbouring homes. Here one of the victims is a 12 year old girl Elizabeth Chalimba, who left school when she was in standard six to work as a nanny in order to support her siblings. Children from low income families are at risk because though school is their only hope for a better future, they dropp out because their parents are failing to provide them with basic needs. Apart from child labour, psychological problems due to poverty is also another cause of school dropp outs. Research shows that the impact of poverty is greater on children as opposed to adults. Firstly, the problem arises due to the environment in which these children are raised. These environments being impoverished, they are intellectually unstimulating, and lack of stimulation results in impaired intellectual development of a child. This in turn contributes to failure in class which can later on lead to school dropp out.
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poem by Innocent Masina Nkhonyo
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Trapped
You know they got me trapped in this prison of seclusion
Happiness, living on tha streets is a delusion
Even a smooth criminal one day must get caught
Shot up or shot down with tha bullet that he bought
Nine millimeter kickin thinking about what tha streets do to me
Cause they never talk peace in tha black community
All we know is violence, do tha job in silence
Walk tha city streets like a rat pack of tyrants
Too many brothers daily heading for tha big penn
Niggas commin out worse offthan when they went in
Over tha years I done alot of growin up
Getten drunk thrown up
Cuffed up
Then I said I had enough
There must be another route, way out
To money and fame, I changed my name
And played a different game
Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle
If one more cop harrasses me I just might go psycho
And when I gettem
Ill hittem with tha bum rush
Only a lunatic would like to see his skull crushed
Yo, if your smart youll really let me go g
But keep me cooped up in this ghetto and catch tha uzi
They got me trapped....
Chorus
[uh uh, they cant keep tha black man down]
They got me trapped
[naw, they cant keep tha black man down]
Trapped
[uh uh, they cant keep tha black man down]
Trapped
[naw, they cant keep tha black man down]
They got me trapped
Can barely walk tha city streets
Without a cop harrassing me, searching me
Then asking my identity
Hands up, throw me up against tha wall
Didnt do a thing at all
Im tellen you one day these suckers gotta fall
Cuffed up throw me on tha concrete
Coppers try to kill me
But they didnt know this was tha wrong street
Bang bang, down another casualty
But its a cop whos shot theres brutality
Who do you blame?
Its a shame because tha mans slain
He got caught in tha chains of his own game
How can I feel guilty after all tha things they did to me
Sweated me, hunted me
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song performed by 2 Pac
Added by Lucian Velea
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Who Benefits From A Not Getting Of It?
No one's here to endure pain or suffering.
No one can explain to what gain pain brings.
Who benefits from sacrificing love?
Who benefits from sacrificing joy?
Who benefits from,
A not getting of it?
Who benefits from,
A missing of this?
Who benefits from sacrificing love?
Who benefits from,
A not getting of it.
Who benefits from,
A missing of this.
Who benefits from sacrificing joy.
Who benefits from,
Not getting it.
Who benefits from,
A missing of this.
People,
Are not getting...
What prophets are saying 'bout powers of love.
People,
Are not getting...
What prophets are saying 'bout powers of love.
No one's here to endure pain or suffering.
No one can explain to what gain pain brings.
People,
Are not getting...
What prophets are saying 'bout powers of love.
People,
Are not getting...
What prophets are saying 'bout powers of love.
Who benefits from a not getting of it.
People,
Are not getting...
What prophets are saying 'bout powers of love.
People,
Are not getting...
What prophets are saying 'bout powers of love.
Who benefits from a not getting of it.
Who benefits from a not getting of it.
People,
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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Universal Traveler
Universal Traveler - Air
(Talkie Walkie; Trans. by Tish)
I know so many
Places in the world
I follow the sun
In my silver plane
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
If you have a look
Outside on the sea
Everything is white
It's so wonderful
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
So far
So far
So far away
I met so many
People in my life
I've got many friends
Who can care for me
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Trust fills everywhere ?
And tomorrow
Is a brand new day
Let's go somewhere else
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
Universal traveler
So far
So far
So far away
So far
So far
So far away
So far
So far
So far away
So far
So far
So far away
song performed by Air
Added by Lucian Velea
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Feeling Out Of Sorts?
Feeling out of sorts these days?
Want to know what you can do?
Need help? Here are 50 ways,
Maybe you'll benefit from a few
ROTMS
SYMPTOMS OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
1. Changing sleep patterns: restlessness, hot feet, waking up two or three times a night. Feeling tired after you wake up and sleepy off and on during the day.
There is something called the Triad Sleep Pattern that occurs for many: you sleep for about 2-3 hours, wake up, go back to sleep for another couple of hours, wake again, and go back to sleep again. For others, the sleep requirements have changed. You can get by on less sleep.
Lately I have been experiencing huge waves of energy running into my body from the crown. It feels good, but it keeps me awake for a long time, then subsides.
Advice: Get used to it. Make peace with it and don't worry about getting enough sleep (which often causes more insomnia) . You will be able to make it through the day if you hold thoughts of getting just what you need. You can also request your Higher Power to give you a break now and then and give you a good, deep night's sleep.
If you can't go back to sleep right away, use the waking moments to meditate, read poetry, write in your journal or look at the moon. Your body will adjust to the new pattern.
2. Activity at the crown of the head: Tingling, itching, prickly, crawling sensations along the scalp and/or down the spine. A sense of energy vibrating on top of the head, as if energy is erupting from the head in a shower. Also the sensation of energy pouring in through the crown, described as 'sprinkles'.
This may also be experienced as pressure on the crown, as if someone is pushing his/her finger into the center of your head. As I mentioned in #1, I have been experiencing huge downloads of energy through the crown.
In the past, I have felt more generalized pressure, as if my head is in a gentle vise. One man related that his hair stood on end and his body was covered with goosebumps.
Advice: This is nothing to be alarmed about. What you are experiencing is an opening of the crown chakra. The sensations mean that you are opening up to receive divine energy.
3. Sudden waves of emotion. Crying at the dropp of a hat. Feeling suddenly angry or sad with little provocation. Or inexplicably depressed. Then very happy. Emotional roller coaster. There is often a pressure or sense of emotions congested in the heart chakra (the middle of the chest) . This is not to be confused with the heart, which is located to the left of the heart chakra.
Advice: Accept your feelings as they come up and let them go. Go directly to your heart chakra and feel the emotion. Expand it outward to your all your fields and breathe deeply from the belly all the way up to your upper chest. Just feel the feeling and let it evaporate on its own. Don't direct the emotions at anyone.
You are cleaning out your past. If you want some help with this, say out loud that you intend to release all these old issues and ask your Higher Power to help you. You can also ask Grace Elohim to help you release with ease and gentleness. Be grateful that your body is releasing the see motions and not holding onto them inside where they can do harm.
One source suggests that depression is linked to letting go of relationships to people, work, etc. that no longer match us and our frequencies. When we feel guilty about letting go of these relationships, depression helps us medicate that pain.
4. Old 'stuff' seems to be coming up, as described above, and the people with whom you need to work it out (or their clones) appear in your life. Completion issues.
Or perhaps you need to work through issues of self-worth, abundance, creativity, addictions, etc. The resources or people you need to help you move through these issues start to appear.
Advice: Same as #3. Additionally, don't get too involved in analyzing these issues. Examining them too much will simply cycle you back through them over and over again at deeper and deeper levels. Get professional help if you need to and walk through it.
Do not try to avoid them or disassociate yourself from them. Embrace whatever comes up and thank it for helping you move ahead. Thank your Higher Power for giving you the opportunity to release these issues. Remember, you don't want these issues to stay stuck in your body.
5. Changes in weight. The weight gain in the US population is phenomenal. Other people may be losing weight.
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poem by Ray Lucero
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Compassion and Understanding
Compassion and understanding may not remedy an inner city crisis or syndrome of poverty thus crime, divorce, single parent households and despair but it allows the church to not stereotype and judge in a false manner creating more alienation from the very ones we are trying to reach.
When our ideologies use simple maxims and platitudes that are subtly dismissive and condescending of a person a group of people we can actually insult them while we are trying to tell them about the love of Christ. The housing and ethnicity and immigrant levels are much different in a city like Lynn, Massachusetts then say Marblehead or Melrose, Massachusetts. Certain cities like Detroit, Michigan that were dependent on the automobile industry going through major lay offs will be different than other major cities not so affected; it is common sense in many ways. What is not common sense is the way the poverty and discrimination takes place and the way the politics deals with areas needing more help and better policies. Many of these people have lost their health care etc. Many who have lost their jobs by out sourcing are now almost looked at like leeches by the right wing. Many of these people are angry, frustrated and feel truly disenfranchised as they watch the rich given tax breaks and tax shelters. We need to hear them as we witness to them with love and compassion not label them or let superficial perspectives sum up their perspective and turn them away. They may have to forgive but we can't pretend there is nothing to forgive or their complaints and anger has no basis. So many of these people would never make it in a right wing church preaching the evil is over in the Islamic countries. I have been to these entrenched churches of right wing good and evil and they are so superficial. These churches will never preach the land Sabbaths and justice vision of the law of the Old Testament concerning poverty etc. They don't even support Health Care. They are loaded with nationalism and exalt capitalism and refuse to see the truth of Leviticus 25 and 26 and all the laws where a field could only be gleaned 1 time then the rest was for the poor. The laws that returned land back to the original families of the tribes of Israel every fifty years and who ever bought them had to return them to the family. No amassing of land etc. You'll never hear these sermons behind their pulpits. One recently called me a socialist for even talking about them but there in the Bible. Many of these churches say they love Israel but never tell you that the Israeli government of today has one of the best universal Health Care systems in the world. It really is a SHAME!
We actually used words like white trash when I was growing up with the innuendo that some groups of people don't want to better than themselves so this also was racist at times.
When we are closed to causes of how certain areas became poor with high crime rates and use superficial reasoning why we become less effective. When our ideology or politics refuses to understand reality and only see through our own politics etc we do not allow people to be fully understood or at times free to express themselves. When sociology and other view points of how areas and especially depressed urban areas got like they have are not looked at we cut ourselves off from understanding and compassion. The feeling of empathy has to be there but so does the intellect without barriers.
Slum landlords, changing laws that favor the wealthy and the influence of wealth on city, county and state councils all play apart in a persons story. Their anger, despair, fears and entire personality can be involved in the region they were raised in or come to and feel trapped in. The crime, the single mother raising the kids and many other factors factor in. Language and assimilating, housing in poor areas is much different than housing in neighborhoods not as affected so directly by poverty.
When plants leave a gap of money is gone in a poor area the situation can become desperate quickly. Some areas have 25% unemployment. The poverty, drugs and crime is off the chart. The single mother house holds is off the charts. If we were working with one of these women who has had children involved with crime and a daughter pregnant out of a relationship and she is bitter about the system and we try to throw at her nothing but rhetoric of individual responsibility and a right wing or left wing jargon we are wrong.
We may not be able to change the system around her but we can do our best to understand it. Right?
We are in changing times in the USA. Jobs have been out sourced for profit with out concern for sweat shops in other countries and environmental standards or USA workers. The victims are blamed. Many are called lazy and the new kind of white trash symbols and rhetoric emerges. The rich become richer and wage their class warfare. We are going to meet and work with more and more people in these kind of scenarios and we need to open our understanding and leave behind our stereotypes and perspectives that do not allow us to hear and see them and their situation for what it is. As the American dream for many diminishes the Gospel never does. We certainly do not need to preach nothing but a social Gospel or a socialist message of utopia as we near the Great Tribulation but we need to understand what so many of our brothers and sisters are going through and quit calling this understanding a false intellectualism. I see the Church of the Living God transcending politics and ideology in these last days while increasing in true brotherly love and compassion.
poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society
Epigraph
Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.
I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.
You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Trapped Again
Here I am baby, right where you found me
Trying to break these chains that surround me
If I look a little different, its because Ive changed
Half-painted pictures are all that remains
I cant let my past mistakes
Let em bring me down
I aint waitin on no angel of mercy
Ive tried my best and I cant help myself
And Im trapped again
And I cant get out without losing you
And Im trapped again
Why cant you feel what Im going through
Im trapped again
I need an answer girl, cant you see
Im trapped again
Come and rescue me
Monday morning came so fast
What a fool to think that dreams would last
Close my eyes and its still so clear
Remember the night girl, the world disappeared
Cant let the hand of fate
Let it drag me down
I cant get no angel of mercy
I cam to stay but I got swept away
And Im trapped again
And I cant get out without losing you
And Im trapped again
Why cant you feel what Im going through
Im trapped again
I need an answer girl, cant you see
Im trapped again
Come and rescue me
Cant let the hand of fate
Let it drag me down
I cant get no angel of mercy
I cam to stay but I got swept away
And Im trapped again
And I cant get out without losing you
And Im trapped again
Why cant you feel what Im going through
Im trapped again
I need an answer girl, cant you see
Im trapped again
Come and rescue me
And Im trapped again
And I cant get out without losing you
And Im trapped again
Why cant you feel what Im going through
Im trapped again
song performed by Bruce Springsteen
Added by Lucian Velea
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April, March! Soldiers Search for HUNGER MARCH - A2 Story
Lot of hunger and empty bowl without food is poverty,
Not having one more dress to take bath is poverty,
Sheltered, willing but failing to accommodate a guest is also poverty,
Mother's sick but cannot afford treatment is also poverty,
If treated, prescribed but cannot buy medicine is poverty;
A mother's thought,2 mouthful of rice with 3 children is poverty.
April, March! Soldiers search for Hunger march at poverty's home.
The fort of confidence is dismantled by poverty and frustration;
They can build castles in air though lack inspiration,
They simply look for food threw in dustbin in month of May!
They die while living, live in dying daily with their life of dismay;
Poverty is not crime but it is a curse and worse...
I'm brand ambassador of poverty and I endorse!
April, March! Soldiers search for Hunger march at poverty's home.
Don't show poverty as excuse...
God gave you brain and make use and bemuse,
No matter if you are born in poverty's slum-dom
While some are handicap blind, dumb, deaf and a cough;
You work and Strive dawn to dusk with inspiration, if
You make education oxygen of your life and your kingdom.
April, March! Soldiers search for Hunger march at poverty's home.
Hence, don't look up to someone or don't cry and cry;
Go far, father and farthest, Age is no bar so try and try!
Take all ladders, Surpass Eiffel Tower and reach the sky!
Remember one Booker T Washington and Abraham Lincoln
Became presidents of America, and poverty is won!
April, March! Soldiers search for Hunger march at poverty's home.
From in India to Cambodia and Georgia to Indonesia,
From Kazakhstan to Afghanistan, China and all Asia;
From Namibia to Zambia and Algeria to Nigeria,
From Uganda to Rwanda, Morocco and all South Africa;
Bolivia to Columbia, Guyana to Argentina and all South America;
Third world is resounding with Mania! Mania! Food Mania!
April, March! Soldiers search for Hunger march at poverty's home.
........................................ ................................................. ........................
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>READ PART ONE >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
BIG NOTICE BOARD: Sorry, if you LIKE to grasp central theme of poem Just take a break! Now READ PART1 to make your reading wholesome.
April, March! Soldiers Search for HUNGER MARCH - A1 Story
poem by Harindhar Reddy
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I'll Do My Best To Deliver
Ask me for what you want.
Just ask me,
Ask me.
And make it anything,
You need...
From me.
Ask me for what you want.
Ask me for what you need,
And I'll do my best to deliver.
Ask me.
Just ask me.
Ask me for what you want.
Just ask me.
Ask me.
Ask me for anything,
And I will fullfill...
That need.
Ask me for what you want.
Ask me for what you need,
And I'll do my best to deliver.
Ask me.
Just ask me.
And I'll do my best to deliver.
Ask me.
Just ask me.
Oh ask me for what you want.
Ask me for what you need,
And I'll do my best to deliver.
Ask me.
Just ask me.
And I will do my best to deliver.
Ask me.
Just ask me.
And I'll do my best to deliver.
Ask me.
Just ask me.
And I will do my best to deliver.
Just ask me for what you want.
Just ask me for what you need,
And I will do my best to deliver.
Come thunderstorms, rain or shine...
That pressure you have will be taken right off your mind.
I will do my best to deliver.
Just ask me...
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Ch 07 On The Effects Of Education Story 20
Contention of Sa’di with a Disputant concerning Wealth and Poverty
I saw a man in the form but not with the character of a dervish, sitting in an assembly, who had begun a quarrel; and, having opened the record of complaints, reviled wealthy men, alleging at last that the hand of power of dervishes to do good was tied and that the foot of the intention of wealthy men to do good was broken.
The liberal have no money.
The wealthy have no liberality.
I, who had been cherished by the wealth of great men, considered these words offensive and said: ‘My good friend, the rich are the income of the destitute and the hoarded store of recluses, the objects of pilgrims, the refuge of travellers, the bearers of heavy loads for the relief of others. They give repasts and partake of them to feed their dependants and servants, the surplus of their liberalities being extended to widows, aged persons, relatives and neighbours.’
The rich must spend for pious uses, vows and hospitality,
Tithes, offerings, manumissions, gifts and sacrifices.
How canst thou attain their power of doing good who art able
To perform only the prayer-flections and these with a hundred distractions?
If there be efficacy in the power to be liberal and in the ability of performing religious duties, the rich can attain it better because they possess money to give alms, their garments are pure, their reputation is guarded, their hearts are at leisure. Inasmuch as the power of obedience depends upon nice morsels and correct worship upon elegant clothes, it is evident that hungry bowels have but little strength, an empty hand can afford no liberality, shackled feet cannot walk, and no good can come from a hungry belly.
He sleeps troubled in the night
Who has no support for the morrow.
The ant collects in summer a subsistence
For spending the winter in ease.
Freedom from care and destitution are not joined together and comfort in poverty is an impossibility. A man who is rich is engaged in his evening devotions whilst another who is poor is looking for his evening meal. How can they resemble each other?
He who possesses means is engaged in worship.
Whose means are scattered, his heart is distracted.
The worship of those who are comfortable is more likely to meet with acceptance, their minds being more attentive and not distracted or scattered. Having a secure income, they may attend to devotion. The Arab says: ‘I take refuge with Allah against base poverty and neighbours whom I do not love. There is also a tradition: Poverty is blackness of face in both worlds.’ He retorted by asking me whether I had heard the Prophet’s saying: Poverty is my glory. I replied: ‘Hush! The prince of the world alluded to the poverty of warriors in the battlefield of acquiescence and of submission to the arrow of destiny; not to those who don the patched garb of righteousness but sell the doles of food given them as alms.’
O drum of high sound and nothing within,
What wilt thou do without means when the struggle comes?
Turn away the face of greed from people if thou art a man.
Trust not the rosary of one thousand beads in thy hand.
A dervish without divine knowledge rests not until his poverty, culminates in unbelief; for poverty is almost infidelity, because a nude person cannot be clothed without money nor a prisoner liberated. How can the like of us attain their high position and how does the bestowing resemble the receiving hand? Knowest thou not that God the most high and glorious mentions in his revealed word the Pleasures of paradise-They shall have a certain provision in paradise-to inform thee that those who are occupied with cares for a subsistence are excluded from the felicity of piety and that the realm of leisure is under the ring of the certain provision.
The thirsty look in their sleep
On the whole world as a spring of water.
Wherever thou beholdest one who has experienced destitution and tasted bitterness, throwing himself wickedly into fearful adventures and not avoiding their consequences, he fears not the punishment of Yazed and does not discriminate between what is licit or illicit.
The dog whose head is touched by a clod of earth
Leaps for joy, imagining it to be a bone.
And when two men take a corpse on their shoulders,
A greedy fellow supposes it to be a table with food.
But the possessor of wealth is regarded with a favourable eye by the Almighty for the lawful acts he has done and preserved from the unlawful acts he might commit. Although I have not fully explained this matter nor adduced arguments, I rely on thy sense of justice to tell me whether thou hast ever seen a mendicant with his hands tied up to his shoulders or a poor fellow sitting in prison or a veil of innocence rent or a guilty hand amputated, except in consequence of poverty? Lion-hearted men were on account of their necessities captured in mines which they had dug to rob houses and their heels were perforated. It is also possible that a dervish, impelled by the cravings of his lust and unable to restrain it, may commit sin because the stomach and the sexual organs are twins, that is to say, they are the two children of one belly and as long as one of these is contented, the other will likewise be satisfied. I heard that a dervish had been seen committing a wicked act with a youth, and although he had been put to shame, he was also in danger of being stoned. He said: ‘O Musalmans, I have no power to marry a wife and no patience to restrain myself. What am I to do? There is no monasticism in Islam.” Among the number of causes producing internal tranquility and comfort in wealthy people, the fact may be reckoned that they take every night a sweetheart in their arms and may every day contemplate a youth whose brightness excels that of the shining morn and causes the feet of walking cypresses to conceal themselves abashed.
Plunging the fist into the blood of beloved persons,
Dying the finger-tips with the colour of the jujube-fruit.
[...] Read more
Poem Of Poverty
Poverty, brothers, is a mouthful that's hard to swallow,
A bite that sticks in your throat and leaves you in sorrow,
When you watch the pale faces and rheumy eyes
Observing you like ghosts and holding out thin hands;
Behind you they lie, stretched out
Their whole lives through, until the moment of death.
Above them in the air, as if in disdain,
Crosses and stony minarets pierce the sky,
Prophets and saints in many colours radiate splendour.
And poverty feels betrayed.
Poverty carries its own vile imprint,
It is hideous, repulsive, disgusting.
The brow that bears it, the eyes that express it,
The lips that try in vain to hide it
Are the offspring of ignorance, the victims of disdain,
The filthy scraps flung from the table
At which for centuries
Some pitiless, insatiable dog has fed.
Poverty has no good fortune, only rags,
The tattered banners of a hope
Shattered by broken promises.
Poverty wallows in debauchery.
In dark corners, together with dogs, rats, cats,
On mouldy, stinking, filthy mattresses,
Naked breasts exposed, sallow dirty bodies,
With feelings overwhelmed by bestial desire,
They bite, devour, suck, kiss the sullied lips,
And in unbridled lust the thirst is quenched,
The craving stilled, and self-consciousness lost.
Here is the source of the imbeciles, the servants and the beggars
Who will tomorrow be born to fill the streets.
Poverty shines in the eyes of the newborn,
Flickers like the pale flame of a candle
Under a ceiling blackened with smoke and spider webs,
Where human shadows tremble on damp stained walls,
Where the ailing infant wails like a banshee
To suck the dry breasts of its wretched mother
Who, pregnant again, curses god and the devil,
Curses the heavy burden of her unborn child.
Her baby does not laugh, it only wastes away,
Unwanted by its mother, who curses it, too.
How sorrowful is the cradle of the poor
Where a child is rocked with tears and sighs.
Poverty's child is raised in the shadows
Of great mansions, too high for imploring voices to reach
To disturb the peace and quiet of the lords
[...] Read more
poem by Migjeni
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Poem Of Poverty
Poverty, brothers, is a mouthful that's hard to swallow,
A bite that sticks in your throat and leaves you in sorrow,
When you watch the pale faces and rheumy eyes
Observing you like ghosts and holding out thin hands;
Behind you they lie, stretched out
Their whole lives through, until the moment of death.
Above them in the air, as if in disdain,
Crosses and stony minarets pierce the sky,
Prophets and saints in many colours radiate splendour.
And poverty feels betrayed.
Poverty carries its own vile imprint,
It is hideous, repulsive, disgusting.
The brow that bears it, the eyes that express it,
The lips that try in vain to hide it
Are the offspring of ignorance, the victims of disdain
The filthy scraps flung from the table
At which for centuries
Some pitiless, insatiable dog has fed.
Poverty has no good fortune, only rags,
The tattered banners of a hope
Shattered by broken promises.
Poverty wallows in debauchery.
In dark corners, together with dogs, rats, cats,
On mouldy, stinking, filthy mattresses,
Naked breasts exposed, sallow dirty bodies,
With feelings overwhelmed by bestial desire,
They bite, devour, suck, kiss the sullied lips,
And in unbridled lust the thirst is quenched,
The craving stilled, and self-consciousness lost.
Here is the source of the imbeciles, the servants and the beggars
Who will tomorrow be born to fill the streets.
Poverty shines in the eyes of the newborn,
Flickers like the pale flame of a candle
Under a ceiling blackened with smoke and spider webs,
Where human shadows tremble on damp stained walls,
Where the ailing infant wails like a banshee
To suck the dry breasts of its wretched mother
Who, pregnant again, curses god and the devil,
Curses the heavy burden of her unborn child.
Her baby does not laugh, it only wastes away,
Unwanted by its mother, who curses it, too.
How sorrowful is the cradle of the poor
Where a child is rocked with tears and sighs.
Poverty's child is raised in the shadows
Of great mansions, too high for imploring voices to reach
To disturb the peace and quiet of the lords
[...] Read more
poem by Millosh Gjergj Nikolla
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Blaming Poverty On The Poor
Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty
A.K.A, cheapest labor force
Poverty works, never ever unemployed
A much needed commodity to justify
White-collar crime classes
Teaching dastardly deeds—to procure monetary needs-
fostering avarice greed
Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty
A.K.A., cheapest labor force
Poverty creates jobs for those financing the societal
Institution of ya godda pay more taxes
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Look! what Enron did to those less fortunate
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Did not corporations want a billion dollar welfare check
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Give us your deprived, your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry, Poverty
A.K.A., cheapest labor force
No penance just punishment augmenting the pillar of economic pillaging
Poor people put in the pillory from the political pulpit
Poverty is prime property
Poverty pimps portrayed as political preachers purely punitive but polite
The pluralization of Poverty provides prestige of the patricians
Poverty, the promissory note from the bureaucratic infidel
The Truth will tell—the truth will tell
Poverty the patriotic prisoner on trial for treason
Copyright 2001
poem by Josephine DixonBanks
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Canto the Second
I
Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain:
The best of mothers and of educations
In Juan's case were but employ'd in vain,
Since, in a way that's rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.
II
Had he but been placed at a public school,
In the third form, or even in the fourth,
His daily task had kept his fancy cool,
At least, had he been nurtured in the north;
Spain may prove an exception to the rule,
But then exceptions always prove its worth -—
A lad of sixteen causing a divorce
Puzzled his tutors very much, of course.
III
I can't say that it puzzles me at all,
If all things be consider'd: first, there was
His lady-mother, mathematical,
A—never mind; his tutor, an old ass;
A pretty woman (that's quite natural,
Or else the thing had hardly come to pass);
A husband rather old, not much in unity
With his young wife—a time, and opportunity.
IV
Well—well, the world must turn upon its axis,
And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
And live and die, make love and pay our taxes,
And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails;
The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us,
The priest instructs, and so our life exhales,
A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame,
Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps a name.
V
I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz -—
A pretty town, I recollect it well -—
'T is there the mart of the colonial trade is
(Or was, before Peru learn'd to rebel),
And such sweet girls—I mean, such graceful ladies,
Their very walk would make your bosom swell;
I can't describe it, though so much it strike,
Nor liken it—I never saw the like:
[...] Read more
poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
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Second Book
TIMES followed one another. Came a morn
I stood upon the brink of twenty years,
And looked before and after, as I stood
Woman and artist,–either incomplete,
Both credulous of completion. There I held
The whole creation in my little cup,
And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank,
'Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine
And all these peoples.'
I was glad, that day;
The June was in me, with its multitudes
Of nightingales all singing in the dark,
And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split.
I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God!
So glad, I could not choose be very wise!
And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull
My childhood backward in a childish jest
To see the face of't once more, and farewell!
In which fantastic mood I bounded forth
At early morning,–would not wait so long
As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings,
But, brushing a green trail across the lawn
With my gown in the dew, took will and way
Among the acacias of the shrubberies,
To fly my fancies in the open air
And keep my birthday, till my aunt awoke
To stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on,
As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves;
'The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned
Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone,
And so with me it must be, unless I prove
Unworthy of the grand adversity,–
And certainly I would not fail so much.
What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day
In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it,
Before my brows be numb as Dante's own
To all the tender pricking of such leaves?
Such leaves? what leaves?'
I pulled the branches down,
To choose from.
'Not the bay! I choose no bay;
The fates deny us if we are overbold:
Nor myrtle–which means chiefly love; and love
Is something awful which one dare not touch
So early o' mornings. This verbena strains
The point of passionate fragrance; and hard by,
This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck
Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.
Ah–there's my choice,–that ivy on the wall,
That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow
[...] Read more
poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Trapped
Well it seems like Im caught up in your trap again
And it seems like Ill be wearin the same ol chains
Good will conquer evil and the truth will set you free
Then I know someday Ill find the key
Then I know somewhere Ill find the key
Well it seem like Ive been playin the game way too long
And it seems the game I played has made you strong
Well when the game is over, I wont walk out a loser
And I know that Ill walk out of here again
And I know that someday Ill walk out of here again
But now Im trapped...oh yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah!
Now it seems like Ive been sleepin in your bed too long
And it seems like youve been meanin to do me harm
But Ill teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me
And someday Ill walk out of here again
Yeah I know someday Ill walk out of here again
(chorus)
Well it seem like Ive been playin the game way too long
And it seems the game I played has made you strong
Because Im trapped...oh yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah!
Im trapped...oh yeah yeah!
Trapped...oh yeah yeah
Trapped...oh yeahhhhhh
Trapped....oh yeahhhh
Im trapped.
song performed by Bruce Springsteen
Added by Lucian Velea
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Metamorphoses: Book The First
OF bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
The Creation of Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
the World And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois'd, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.
But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end:
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were
driv'n,
And grosser air sunk from aetherial Heav'n.
Thus disembroil'd, they take their proper place;
The next of kin, contiguously embrace;
And foes are sunder'd, by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a num'rous throng
Of pondrous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had form'd the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded Earth into a spacious round:
Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
And bad the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in Earth are swallow'd up, the most
In ample oceans, disembogu'd, are lost.
[...] Read more
V. Count Guido Franceschini
Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,
I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down
Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,
Fortified by the sip of … why, 't is wine,
Velletri,—and not vinegar and gall,
So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!
Oh, but one sip's enough! I want my head
To save my neck, there's work awaits me still.
How cautious and considerate … aie, aie, aie,
Nor your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart
An ordinary matter. Law is law.
Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,
From racking; but, since law thinks otherwise,
I have been put to the rack: all's over now,
And neither wrist—what men style, out of joint:
If any harm be, 't is the shoulder-blade,
The left one, that seems wrong i' the socket,—Sirs,
Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,
Being past my prime of life, and out of health.
In short, I thank you,—yes, and mean the word.
Needs must the Court be slow to understand
How this quite novel form of taking pain,
This getting tortured merely in the flesh,
Amounts to almost an agreeable change
In my case, me fastidious, plied too much
With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)
To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,
And, in and out my heart, the play o' the probe.
Four years have I been operated on
I' the soul, do you see—its tense or tremulous part—
My self-respect, my care for a good name,
Pride in an old one, love of kindred—just
A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,
That looked up to my face when days were dim,
And fancied they found light there—no one spot,
Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang.
That, and not this you now oblige me with,
That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!
The poor old noble House that drew the rags
O' the Franceschini's once superb array
Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged by,—
Pluck off these! Turn the drapery inside out
And teach the tittering town how scarlet wears!
Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence
Of the easy-natured Count before this Count,
The father I have some slight feeling for,
Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that friends
Then proud to cap and kiss their patron's shoe,
Would, when the purse he left held spider-webs,
Properly push his child to wall one day!
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Welfare Mothers
People, pick up on what Im puttin down now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Down at every laundromat in town now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
While theyre washin you can hear this sound now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Divorcee!
Hard to believe that love is free now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Out on the street with the whole family now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Hard to believe that love is free now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Divorcee!
People, pick up on what Im puttin down now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Down in every laundromat in town now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
While theyre washin you can hear this sound now
Welfare mothers make better lovers
Divorcee!
song performed by Neil Young
Added by Lucian Velea
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