Friday, August 26, 2011

The Thursday Think Tank #63 - Something Stinks

Her body stinks
like the smell of rotten
eggs and human dung.
She removes the muck
that chokes every sewer
in the big bad city.

In the bowels of the city
she braves the stink
and opens the sewer.
It's a sick rotten
job she has to do; the muck
has to be tackled. She dreads the dung.

People leave their dung
for her to clean. It chokes the city
sewers with noxious muck ,
making it a gaseous stink
bomb. Everything is rotten
in this dark dangerous sewer.

They can only create a sewer
to control the flow of dung
spoilt water, and all the rotten
products of excesses found in the city.
The overpowering stink
comes from a month of piled up muck.

She has been cursed to live in muck
and condemned to clean the sewer.
She can't afford soap- she stinks.
One day the heaps of slimy dung
will claim her- a victim of the city.
It has already declared her rotten.

As she lives her fate, she feels rotten.
She has been drowned into muck
by the privileged evil of the city.
They can only make a sewer;
they can't clean their own dung.
It is them who really stink.

But the city leaves her to stink
alone; she cleans the sewers of rotten
people who're too good to clear mucky dung.

9 comments:

  1. Well expressed. I definitely can smell the 'stink' in this poem!

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  2. sad - that smell would never fade

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  3. I can almost smell it....with the strength of your words....well done for the prompt! :-)

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  4. I had to grab my nose because the stench I felt was so powerful, quite literally.

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  5. You've skirted around a profound social statement... issues of social caste, haves and have-nots, social strata that seem impenetrable. You've said a lot.

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  6. This is really profound thoughts and you have said it so well...the ones who keep the city clean, silent and unknown living on the fringes of society that mocks them.

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  7. very masterful piece.

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  8. Hello,

    Hope all is well.

    Appreciated your support to Jingle Poetry Community,

    Welcome sharing your talent in our new garden home.

    Random piece or old ones are welcome too.

    Bless you.
    Happy End of August.
    Hope to see you share today.
    xoxox

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  9. Extremely strong powerful poem - even better when it is from a prompt. :)

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