THE REASON

I am the cancer wanting more.

I fill my gasoline tank with war.

I drink poverty in coffee and politics in coke.

Children are stitched in the seams of my shirt.

A dirty old man pockets my coin.

Manhattan’s canyons are my cocoon.

My daughters are raised by a refugee.

My house is built out of forests that breathe.

Fourteen cameras watch my door.

I am the cancer wanting more.

If not for me they would earn no wage,

grow no flowers, sell no leaves.

That’s why there are continents, master and slave;

why religions, righteous apartheid;

why pandemics, generational genocide.

All the four horsemen ride through their homes,

but I sleep well in my temperate zone.

I take pride in the stuff I own.

I want to help them to turn the page;

If not for me they would earn no wage.

Someone who knows the taste of rats

will have to put them on the boats

and let them in. I am not of their tribe.

I meet them on vacation. I do not sit

at the back of my tent blind from disease

awaiting my killers or my next meal.

I am the most evolved. Success has orphaned me.

Someone will have to do something more

deserving of a parade than winning a war,

Someone who knows the taste of rats.

Dave Haskins., Canada