Thursday, February 25, 2010

How to End World Hunger

Consider the flower.
Don’t pick it.
Not yet.

Don’t make it into a movie.
Don’t make it go to work.

Paint it.

Make it elegant.
Make it tall.

Give it a shadow.
Purple kissed in blue.

Make the petals yellow.
Make them look like sun.

Balance it on one leg.
Give it a skirt of sand.

Be a woman with an empty pail.
A woman waiting.
A woman sitting on a white ladder.
Be a man rising from a white sea.
Find an umbrella.

Paint rain.
Paint a billowing white dress.
Paint it on yourself.
Paint the wind. Give it language.

Speak for the wind.
Speak for the woman
Speak for yourself.
Speak for the man rising from the white sea.

Make his language reluctant.
Make him want to stay.

Paint ears on the man.
Paint words on the lips of the woman.

Return to the flower.
Return to the man.
Return to the white sea churning.

Paint the woman walking.
Paint her stepping through the sand.
Paint the man pursuing.
Paint the woman praying.
Paint them together.
Paint them as friends.
Paint them eating a petal.
Paint the woman held by the man.
Paint the man held by the woman.

Paint the sea devoid of salt.
Make the water yield.
Make it spill upon the shore.

Paint the woman digging,
her hands plunging through the earth.

Paint the man beside her.
Paint him digging also.

Paint the need for beauty.
Paint the need for food.

Paint the man and the woman tugging.
Paint the flower prostrate.
Paint the flower felled.
Paint a storm of banished seeds.
Paint a crop of doom.
Paint a crop of angst and war.
Paint the reign of greed.

Paint the woman weeping.
Paint the man distraught.
Paint a field of fallow earth.
Paint a sky of brown.

Paint the woman sans her gown.
Paint the lost and drowned.
Paint the starving children,
Paint the forests slain.
Paint the earthquakes.
Paint the greed.

Paint the birth of grace.
Paint the sky returned to blue.
Paint the green as proof.
Paint the sprout of tender shoots.
Paint the clap of clouds.

Be a man with open palms.
Be a woman bowed.
Plant the seeds that grow to love
and never eat alone.

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