000 Generalities

Poverty is a symbol

It’s as lost as two faces

Conjoining eyes in a mirror

It’s as nameless as two tracks

Topping off at a crossroad

As cold as massive numbers

Turning odds into zeros

So big it becomes

An unmelodious aviary

A zoo inches deep in dust

A house dry of pulsation

Of migrant thought

What’s left between, in-between

When the ringing has stopped

Poverty is noting more

Than what is general

A stack needing to be reshelved

Into the Dewey decimal system

Cooperative as long as it stays in its place

It’s an ancient, archived tete-a-tete

We ride on past without any empathy

Widely biased if not, unplugged

Despair a greater sin for them

As their cries become shut in a book

And this symbol again

Is unheard

clburdett, 2017