On late night TV
you can listen to sad music
while you look at hungry babies
in foreign lands
listen to a cultured voice
tell you that for 30 bucks
you can feed a village
and you can cry for those sluggish babies
with flies attacking
their dry, empty mouths
their vacant eyes
They make you think
you have to do something
you carry the third world
So you write a check and smile as you fix
the stamp to your envelope
It's nice and neat:
your pocketbook opening up
like a hooker's legs
another buy out
such a deal
and then back to your real life
and when the pictures come
from far away
you can take them to work
show off the sweet smiling child you saved
your mind at ease
responsibility appeased
It's a good thing for my people that
we make pretty babies
with shiny black hair,
deer eyes,
soft, friendly skin
because pocketbooks get tight
when you see a drunken Indian with a
pock-marked face
standing lopsided and blocking
a city sidewalk
when you want to pass
his bottle raised to the sky
body weaving and bobbing,
searching for the steadiness of drums
as he tries to remember a dance
he learned as a child
a sacred dance
a hopeful dance
a dance relinquished
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