Poets Against Inequality

POETS AGAINST INEQUALITY

  Anthology of Poetry by

  Poets Unite Worldwide

  ~*~

  Editorial Project

  by

  Fabrizio Frosini

  ~*~

  Poems

  by

  Sayeed Abubakar, Bangladesh

  Alexandro Acevedo Johns, Chile

  Ellias Aghili, Iran

  Kareem Akadri, Nigeria

  Saadat Tahir Ali, Pakistan

  Denis Andrei, Romania

  Tia Attwood, Australia

  Kasiviswanathan Balakrishnan, India

  Anna Banasiak, Poland

  Khaoula Basty, Tunisia

  Lawrence Beck, USA

  Abhilasha Bhatt, India

  Mayjorey Buendia, The Philippines

  Sophy Chen, China

  Sahra Hussein Dahir, Somalia

  Anish Debnath, India

  Luka Dezmalj, Croatia

  Asavri Dhillon, India

  Fabrizio Frosini, Italy

  Alem Hailu G/Kristos, Ethiopia

  Majid Gaggi, Iraq

  Dimitrios Galanis, Greece

  Negar Gorji, Iran

  Birgitta Abimbola Heikka, Nigeria

  Galina Italyanskaya, Russia

  Afrooz Jafarinoor, Iran

  Farzad Jahanbani, Iran

  Sergio Jaime, México

  Seema Jayaraman, India

  Srijana KC Neupane, Nepal

  Phumla Xuza Khanyile, South Africa

  Sofia Kioroglou, Greece

  Varghese Kuncheria, India

  Kelly Kurt, USA

  Agatha-Eliza Laposi, Romania

  Natchai Leenders, The Netherlands

  Edward Kofi Louis, Germany

  Tapera Makadho, Zimbabwe

  Kenneth Maswabi, Botswana

  Wilfred Mellers, USA

  Aphrodite-Anastasia Menegaki, Greece

  Mallika Menon, India

  Leloudia Migdali, Greece

  Asoke Kumar Mitra, India

  Istvan Dan Uriel Molnar, Sweden

  Souren Mondal, India

  Anitah Muwanguzi, Uganda

  Bharati Nayak, India

  Mohammed Asim Nehal, India

  Stephen Pennell, UK

  Sarah Louise Persson, UK

  Dominic Prempeh, Ghana

  Marianne Larsen Reninger, USA

  Govinda Rimal, Bhutan

  Jan Ross, UK

  Sarah Russell, USA

  Leila Samarrai, Serbia

  Kirti Sharma, India

  Anzelyne Shideshe, Kenya

  Osiel Silverino da Silva, Brazil

  Pamela Sinicrope, USA

  Petra Soliman, Egypt

  James Freel Stevenson, UK

  Douglas R. Stewart, USA

  Udaya R. Tennakoon, Sri Lanka

  Savita Tyagi, USA

  Jorge Valles Anguiano, México

  Hans Van Rostenberghe, Belgium

  Mai Venn, Ireland

  Michael Walker, New Zealand

  Aaron Njoroge Wambu, Kenya

  Niken Kusuma Wardani, Indonesia

  Mithilesh Kumar Yadav, India

  ~*~

  Editorial Board:

  Fabrizio Frosini, Daniel Brick

  Kelly Kurt, Souren Mondal, Pamela Sinicrope

  ~*~

  Cover by

  Udaya R. Tennakoon

  ~*~

  Poets Against Inequality

  Copyright 2016 Fabrizio Frosini

  Editorial project by Fabrizio Frosini

  Anthology of Poetry

  73 Poems by

  Poets Unite Worldwide

  Fabrizio Frosini, Pamela Sinicrope, Galina Italyanskaya, Kelly Kurt, Souren Mondal, Srijana KC Neupane, Udaya Tennakoon, Negar Gorji, Tapera Makadho, Ellias Aghili, Sayeed Abubakar, Alexandro Acevedo Johns, Kareem Akadri, Saadat Tahir Ali, Denis Andrei, Tia Attwood, Kasiviswanathan Balakrishnan, Anna Banasiak, Khaoula Basty, Lawrence Beck, Abhilasha Bhatt, Mayjorey Buendia, Sophy Chen, Sahra Hussein Dahir, Anish Debnath, Luka Dezmalj, Asavri Dhillon, Alem Hailu G/Kristos, Majid Gaggi, Dimitrios Galanis, Birgitta Abimbola Heikka, Afrooz Jafarinoor, Farzad Jahanbani, Sergio Jaime, Seema Jayaraman, Phumla Xuza Khanyile, Sofia Kioroglou, Varghese Kuncheria, Agatha-Eliza Laposi, Natchai Leenders, Edward Kofi Louis, Kenneth Maswabi, Wilfred Mellers, Aphrodite-Anastasia Menegaki, Mallika Menon, Leloudia Migdali, Asoke Kumar Mitra, Istvan Dan Uriel Molnar, Anitah Muwanguzi, Bharati Nayak, Mohammed Asim Nehal, Stephen Pennell, Sarah Louise Persson, Dominic Prempeh, Marianne Larsen Reninger, Govinda Rimal, Jan Ross, Sarah Russell, Leila Samarrai, Kirti Sharma, Anzelyne Shideshe, Osiel Silverino da Silva, Petra Soliman, James Freel Stevenson, Douglas R. Stewart, Savita Tyagi, Jorge Valles Anguiano, Hans Van Rostenberghe, Mai Venn, Michael Walker, Aaron Njoroge Wambu, Niken Kusuma Wardani, Mithilesh Kumar Yadav

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 9781310392160

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the Authors, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for respecting the work of the Authors.

  ~*~

  In memory of Douglas R. Stewart,

  poet and friend, who passed away only a few days

  before this book was published. An active member in this group

  of poets from 47 countries, worldwide, he will be missed,

  but his poetry will keep him alive in our hearts.

  «Mourning, Marchons!»

  ~*~

  Table of Contents

  Opening Note

  The Poems

  Authors’ biographies

  Where to find us

  ~*~

  .. the bronze coloured woman breaks the bricks.

  Twenty-one? But she has seven children back home, looks forty up,

  and all day for ten taka, not enough to buy food for one, let alone seven,

  she breaks the brick. every day, breaks the bricks.

  Taslima Nasrin

  [from 'The Woman Breaking Bricks']

  Opening Note

  It is not shameful to be poor, nor to be rich. Shameful is a system where the rich become every minute richer, and the poor, poorer. This is exactly the picture Oxfam International has shown us:

  "Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just 1% of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. The World Economic Forum has identified economic inequality as a major risk to human progress, impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale."

  Look at the column below —it shows the number of people whose wealth is equal to that of the poorest half of the world’s population since 2010:

  2010: 388

  2011: 177

  2012: 159

  2013: 92

  2014: 80

  2015: 62

  You have read it right: just 62 people hold as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion!

  From Oxfam report: “Richest 1% have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, and more than 50% in 2015″.(''An Economy for the 1%'', published by Oxfam on 18th January 2016).

  Moreover, the report shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by 1 trillion dollars since 2010 — a drop of 41%. This has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period.

  Meanwhile, the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars – an astonishing 44% – to $1.76 trillion.
>
  All this means that, although the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year: an increase in individuals’ daily income of less than 1 cent a year. Had inequality not grown, in the same period, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty. This is what we are talking of, when we honestly ask ourselves what 'inequality' means for mankind.

  And we’re talking of multinational companies and wealthy individuals using offshore tax havens to avoid a fair taxation.

  Along with almost all wealthy elites —including world leaders, politicians and public officials of more than forty other countries, plus their relatives and associates, as a recent leak (the so-called ‘Panama papers’: a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents) reveals—, 9 out of 10 leading companies have a presence in one or more tax havens around the globe.

  This is fuelling economic inequality.

  Data also show how women are disproportionately affected by inequality, as well by discrimination and exploitation. We cannot hide the fact that in many parts of the world, even in the most advanced countries, the gender pay gap is the norm. Indeed, the majority of low paid workers around the world are women.

  Furthermore, we cannot fail to mention those so-called "traditional cultures" where women are considered ‘property’ of their husband or father, and are subject to child marriage and widespread domestic violence. How to accept that, in the third millennium, in many parts of the world women are denied land and property rights, have no inheritance rights, and are even denied access to learning?

  We are not talking about marginal issues; we are talking of basic rights!

  In 2014 I wrote a poem after I heard that just 85 super rich had as much wealth as the poorest half of our planet (the title is 'Is it true that The Devil Wears Prada?', in 'The Chinese Gardens', 1st Edition, 2015 – you can read the poem at the end of this ‘opening note’); I used, as a footnote, few words taken from a statement by 'Avaaz': "wealth they too often use to buy politicians and capture our democracies to keep the whole system going in their favour".

  It is the same concept expressed by Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International Executive Director: ''This is an Economy for the 1% [..] The richest can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone —their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people."

  And indeed, any honest person is disturbed by the rise of extreme inequality which threatens to undermine the basis of our society, spreading the seeds of increasingly greater social conflicts.

  As poets and citizens of the world, we feel the urge to call for a strong and concrete action by governments and by the best part of mankind to tackle inequality, because if we all work to making sure that everyone has enough to live a decent life, we may reduce inequality, while positively acting to end poverty.

  What we want to get, through this poetry compilation, is to add our voice to those other unequivocal voices that denounce such an absolute lack of equality in our society, and make all such voices resonate in the conscience of all people of goodwill.

  The poems collected in this book belong in what is called "Poetry of Witness", and we believe that this is a task that all of us, as poets, have a moral obligation to pursue, because we can't accept to live in a world where extreme poverty is so widespread and sheer inequality is the norm.

  At the bottom, it is all a matter of sin and greed.. «Because the world has no more miracles to show —And it represents / The most painful betrayal.»

  Now, it’s time to act.

  (Fabrizio Frosini, April 2016)

  ~*~

  Notwithstanding the obvious and comforting

  Exceptions (exceptions die hard, don't they?)

  The tycoons of luxury are not so different from

  Those operating in any other market segment.

  In the globalized economy, where the smart ones learn

  Quickly how to circumvent the rules (if any), that products

  Are weapons or food, health or human flesh, matters little:

  The selfish pursuit of profit substantially always wins.

  All of them live in the enchanted but fake world of

  Finance -a world where profits often come through the

  Suffering/ needs/ weaknesses of other living beings and

  No question is raised about those who are forced to sell

  Their labor (or even themselves) just to survive.

  What matters is the growth of wealth of a tiny

  Minority. Everything else is an annoying surplus of

  Little –if any– relevance.

  Therefore goose feathers –torn off of the living flesh–

  Fill luxury duvets, packaged at little money where

  It's more convenient; then resold at thousands

  US dollars/ Euros/ British pounds/ Swiss francs.

  It is through it, also, that numbered accounts at offshore

  Havens multiply. After all, are not these ones

  Worth much more than any other supposed

  Paradise?

  Fabrizio Frosini

  ‘Is it true that The Devil Wears Prada?’ (2014)

  In 'The Chinese Gardens', 1st Edition, 2015

  ~*~

  "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn

  it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me."

  Nizar Qabbani

  (Damascus, 1923 – London, 1998)

  ~*~

  The Poems

  Sayeed Abubakar, 'I Dream A World'

  Alexandro Acevedo Johns, 'The Tree of Inequality'

  Elias Aghili, 'Kingdoms Fall'

  Kareem Akadri, 'The Giant Tree of Inequality'

  Saadat Tahir Ali, 'Why, I came to be?'

  Denis Andrei, 'Alienated of will'

  Tia Attwood, 'How greed consumes the leaders of this land'

  Kasiviswanathan Balakrishnan, 'To Those Who Govern'

  Anna Banasiak, 'The richness of the soul'

  Khaoula Basty, 'A Poor Engineer'

  Lawrence Beck, 'Circles of Hell'

  Abhilasha Bhatt, 'Rich dad, Poor dad'

  Mayjorey Buendia, 'Inequality / In Equality'

  Sophy Chen, 'Men and Women are not Equal'

  Sahra Hussein Dahir, 'The lost opportunity'

  Anish Debnath, 'Irrational Differentiation'

  Luka Dezmalj, 'Even if a cynic'

  Asavri Dhillon, 'Spear in Chest'

  Fabrizio Frosini, 'Wax and Wane'

  Alem Hailu G/Kristos, 'Inequalities of all shades'

  Majid Gaggi, 'Were not we all born equal?'

  Dimitrios Galanis, 'Throngs groaning'

  Negar Gorji, '[Wo]/Man'

  Birgitta Abimbola Heikka, 'Inequality.. a body atrophied'

  Galina Italyanskaya, 'Not enough'

  Afrooz Jafarinoor, 'To a rich Singer'

  Farzad Jahanbani, 'North; Center; South'

  Sergio Jaime, 'We exist'

  Seema Jayaraman, 'Inequality – In You The Rich Thrive, Soul Denied'

  Srijana KC Neupane, 'Ingrained Inequality'

  Phumla Xuza Khanyile, 'Born to die'

  Sofia Kioroglou, 'He that is greedy..'

  Varghese Kuncheria, 'There is a Sore Evil'

  Kelly Kurt, 'Egalitarianism'

  Agatha-Eliza Laposi, 'The Collector'

  Natchai Leenders, 'The Answer is 62'

  Edward Kofi Louis, 'Creation'

  Tapera Makadho, 'Border of Inequality'

  Kenneth Maswabi, 'Mankind’s worst nightmare'

  Wilfred Mellers, 'Unequally We Stand'

  Aphrodite-Anastasia Menegaki, 'For the world’s one percent..'

  Mallika Menon, 'Weeds of Inequality'

  Leloudia Migdali, 'A Dream in Disgrace'

  Asoke Kumar Mitra, 'Inequality.. in some minds..'

 
Istvan Dan Uriel Molnar, 'Small Cute Shoes'

  Souren Mondal, 'Useless Bastards'

  Anitah Muwanguzi, 'Treasure Hunter'

  Bharati Nayak, 'What A Shame!'

  Mohammed Asim Nehal, 'Barbie Doll'

  Stephen Pennell, 'Sixty Two People'

  Sarah Louise Persson, 'Inequality is Living'

  Dominic Prempeh, 'Fateless Souls on the other side'

  Marianne Larsen Reninger, 'Unfortunate Soul'

  Govinda Rimal, 'Blooming with inequality'

  Jan Ross, 'The shelter'

  Sarah Russell, 'Mental Inequality'

  Leila Samarrai, 'Master & Servant'

  Kirti Sharma, 'What the Poor Say'

  Anzelyne Shideshe, 'A Melody against Inequality'

  Osiel Silverino da Silva, 'Stone Hearts'

  Pamela Sinicrope, 'Know Where To Go'

  Petra Soliman, 'Woman'

  James Freel Stevenson, 'The Power Of The One'

  Douglas R. Stewart, 'Dance of Fear'

  Udaya R. Tennakoon, 'Galileo’s Irony'

  Savita Tyagi, 'The Wolf is there to devour It All..'

  Jorge Valles Anguiano, 'The Actual World'

  Hans Van Rostenberghe, 'Flowers in the desert of greed'

  Mai Venn, 'The ladder of life'

  Michael Walker, 'Outside The ASB Tennis Arena'

  Aaron Njoroge Wambu, 'Pangani Round About'

  Niken Kusuma Wardani, 'Bridge towards Equality'

  Mithilesh Kumar Yadav, ' Existence of Inequality'

  ~*~

  Sayeed Abubakar, Bangladesh

  I Dream A World

  I dream a world where there's no war,

  no suffering, crying or sorrow.

  I dream a world where all are rich,

  a man needs nothing to borrow.

  I dream a world without hatred;

  both love and peace run there their rule.

  I dream a world full of delight,

  smile and smell- the most beautiful.

  I dream a world where no children

  nor the disabled cry for alms,

  where all men live equally,

  and where peace is always welcome.

  I dream a world where no woman

  is tortured nor no virgin raped,

  no acid-thrown on a girl's face

  deforms, our daughters' lives are safe.

  Alexandro Acevedo Johns, Chile

  The Tree of Inequality

  The tree of inequality grew up

  In the midst of the Garden of Earthly Delights,

  But nobody wants to see it.

  It may reach to tear the clouds,

  So it's higher than the Tower of Babel.

  From its tousled branches are hanging

  Heads of children, black, yellow and white hands,

  Wombs of forgotten women and dried hearts;

  All these hidden by misleading lights of hype.