And From The Chaos, Order Stems*

In the spirit of finishing and submitting my creative writing poetry assignment today (the due date) I'm posting one of the two poems (the second to come). Both poems are based around more sober and thought-provoking concepts than I have usually chosen, and in exploring these I feel that my poetry has become reached new levels of eloquence.


Compulsion


There is a bell inside of me
that rings loudly every day,
tolling all the things
that are wrong with the world.


The ironic bloated stomachs of malnutrition.
The punishment that far outweighs the crime.
The powerlessness of the masses.
The brutal destruction of metal-armed man.


It is supposed to remind me
of all the things that I can do;
raise money,
awareness,
take a stand,
make a difference.


But I cannot hear the bell
over the sound of my iPod,
my mobile phone,
the soap on TV.


It knells against my heart;
every three seconds
a child dies
an avoidable death.


All the while,
I shower,
eat,
sleep.


Darfur, Burma, Kosovo;
these household names
should incite protest, petition
and pledges of support,
but we look away;
we’ve seen it all before.


I invest in girly magazines,
clothes I don’t need,
books I could borrow,
food that isn’t good for me.


Bargains, all, but what of
three meals a day, drinking water,
shelter, education and security?
Necessities, all.


The bell serves to compel.
It will keep on ringing
in the hope that one day
I will no longer feign deaf
but take up arms for the cause.


Aims/influences:


Compulsion was written as an exploration of social awareness and my personal actions towards global issues such as poverty, hunger, war and injustice. It also considers the way in which modern culture has become desensitised to the atrocities of the third world due to our high standard of living and constant exposure to this state of affairs in the news media.


x
Just a girl


*In this, I refer to the drafting process, whereby my initial writings of the poems became scribbled over, crossed out, embellished, censored, a mess of arrows and words that could barely be read, let alone understood.