Hunger On The Face With Sunken Eyes Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

Hunger when written on faces
Shows sunken sockets and snarls
It makes the stomach of one
Sing songs of emptiness that
Growl in there like an animal.
The limbs look long and taught
For it has eaten the muscle
That should hold the person up.

Hunger eats those who do not have
And takes away the hope of the now
And throws it in the space far from
The limbs and eyes of the mind. The
Body can no longer walk to the place
Where it used to. It only is a body
Because it fills a space.


Questions asked in hunger are loud
But hollow and answers do not ring
Back. People take what is available
And put it in the mouth, be it mud
Grass shoots or bugs.

Questions asked become when we will
Eat the things that can crawl into
Our blood and make us walk again?
What can we do, to get the what we
Need for now, to go and grow the
What we do not have?


Hunger kills slowly for this is how
Hunger walks. It does not make noisy
Strides like me and you, but stealthy
Ones unseen yet felt deep down.

If we could kill hunger on the face
Of the earth, and wipe it out like
The lions we are, we would have defeated
An enemy that some of us least know
About yet it is the substance that eats
The brain and energy of the earth.

Those who know least of this enemy
Have no idea what a little bit they
Have can do in telling them that it
Is a brother who starves, an aunt,
A sister and the love of your life
For you could have been that person
Had luck dropped you on the wrong
Lap that is walking across deserts,
Oceans and frozen abodes with an
Empty stomach trying to read places
Of safety that into which one cannot
Be allowed.

We share a world that some of us live
In on an everlasting fast that yields
Nothing for people are not thinking
Anything anymore. Flies love such faces
And go there to check if the mouth ever
Closed to hide what they also want. When
We share a world, we share suffering and
Struggles that are sometimes far from what
The eye can see.