Outside A Soup Kitchen Poem by Raymond Farrell

Not even soft music
could move these souls
like a hearty meal
or a job
these educated poor
now come of age
having just plunged
from the fringes
of middle class existence
into abject poverty
threatening to overturn
the bastions of respectability
and swallow up the American Dream
once shunned
but now
playthings in the mouths
of politicians and do-gooders
in search of a cause.

If every half-witted journalist
writing about them
would send $10
these people could buy lunch
and a winter coat
instead of freezing in this lineup
stripped of their dignity
by callous reporters
shooting pictures.

Poverty has become a circus
complete with its own
freak show.