Poetry X Hunger
  • Home
  • Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Hunger Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition >
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
    • Recent highlights
  • Contact/Submit/Take Action
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call to Action
    • Resources & Donations >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources

Now More Than Ever:
Submitted Poems

Poem by Billye Okera

4/12/2020

0 Comments

 
FOUR WALLS CAN'T HOLD ME TONIGHT

Four Walls can’t hold me tonight
Of course, they never have:
A slab of stone hardly a salve
For lone hands reaching into trash
 For a pitiable stash of food
Enough to make it through
  Unfettered and unchained
Called out of name for just wanting
A drink, a touch, and not much else prerequisite.
 
Four walls can’t hold me tonight
My flight in air
A safer fare for folk
Anxious for a place to just lay down
And not found sullied by morning.
  And Not found blighted by morning
 By man-contrived live viruses
Eschewing the virtue of open space
Lacing homeless man
  With menace-mangled death. 
 
It is because I’m homeless
It is because I hunger
It is because my clothes hang about me
  In shreds.  And the dread you’d feel
Stepping into my shoes
Crying my blues
And losing a piece of yourself
  To call me friend.
 
Four walls can’t hold me tonight
  And won’t
As the earth decries the sight
Of me, loosely sheltered under K-Street Bridge
And you safely snuggled under coverlet
  Of your feather bed. 


Picture
Billye Okera has been writing poetry since the age of seventeen.  Considering herself a Folk-Performance Poets, she is the author of two books The Mourners’ Bench, and The Days of Me and God.  At seventy, she has several other projects for publication within the next year.  She is the mother of three, and grandmother of eight.  She resides in Ft. Washington, MD.

0 Comments

    Now more than ever

    These poems have been submitted to the call for poetry "Now more than ever" 

    Archives

    October 2021
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020

    Poets

    All
    Anne Harding Woodworth
    Billye Okera
    Cathy Porter
    Chandra Gurung
    Chantal Do
    Charles Perrone
    Cliff Bernier
    Clifford Bernier
    Dee Allen
    Dennis Price
    Fizza Abbas
    Giulianna DiNapoli
    Henry Crawford
    Hiram Larew
    John Medendorp
    Judith Robinson
    Lavina Blossom
    Linda Ankrah-Dove
    Lisa Reynolds
    Lynda Scott Araya
    Marlena Chertock
    Marsha Mittman
    Martin Chivaku
    Michael Ratcliffe
    Mike Maggio
    MistyRose
    Nick Romeo
    Nina Padolf
    Paul Guenette
    Phyllis Klein
    RD Armstrong
    Richard Littlebear
    Sara Robinson
    Sue Budin
    Teresa Peipins
    Waseeq Mohammad

    RSS Feed

Copyright PoetryXHunger 2022


Search the website:

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Hunger Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition >
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
    • Recent highlights
  • Contact/Submit/Take Action
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call to Action
    • Resources & Donations >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources