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Time to Check the Labels on Our Shirts | Donal Mahoney - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Time to Check the Labels on Our Shirts | Donal Mahoney

Bangladesh is a land of money for clothing firms that pay very low
wages to workers in 400 garment factories near the capital of Dhaka.

Consumers in Western nations benefit from low retail prices for items of clothing these low wages produce.

Some Western consumers may remember that in 2013, 100,000 garment
workers in Bangladesh rioted in search of a monthly wage of $104, an increase they sought over the $39 a month many of them were being paid.

And it’s hard to forget that in 2013 a clothing factory in
Bangladesh collapsed. More than 1100 people died. And, of course,
there was that factory fire in 2012 that took the lives of 112
people.

The latest news story from Bangladesh seems to indicate things
aren’t that much better in that country in 2015.

On July 10, 21 elderly women, three teen-agers and a five-year old
child died when a stampede of hundreds stormed the home of a
businessman expected to provide a handout of free clothing during
Ramadan, the holy Muslim month of fasting and prayer. Thirty others
were rushed to a hospital.

The news story explained the businessman had been detained.

The story also pointed out that human stampedes are common during
charity handouts in South Asian countries.

The story failed to mention, however, that still common, too, are the low wages that make charity handouts in South Asian countries so attractive.

Perhaps it’s time to check the labels on shirts and other clothing
items before we Westerners buy them so we know who made them for us.

More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.

Memory Is Vermillion | Jenny Middleton - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Memory Is Vermillion | Jenny Middleton

My mind a sky tumbled; a glass of thought.
I want to pour on to paper pearled drops
Of dew to quench the hungry, thirsty pages.
Bluely burned and lit words are forming you
Into a being of strange landscapes glowing
Dangerously; death darkly brooding and rank.
Each mental recess an avenue of despair.
You channel rivulets of words pain-bound
To a sea of messages sliding silver-grey
Beneath my hands. Pain, loss and soft beauty too
Shivers and something silk and richly woven
Has begun to sew itself to my clouded
Mind, despite the angry disapproving
Unbelieving staid stares and prying glances.
Past is alive and a throbbing agony
And all memory is vermillion.

Recipe for a DJ | Jim Bellamy - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Recipe for a DJ | Jim Bellamy

In-betweens

To hear a dripping tap in a house
that has no tap, in the dead of night
to hear wombs bounce between thunder and tundra
and to kill time forever: these are the flights

That still the gaze of a murmur till
dreaming slices bread from the mill
and balances praise on a bed. To hear the dead
glancing over the saw-tops while Eden is breathed.

These are astronauts of a weed
and serve all laws till the purpose is filmed.
to hear a tap running while the thrill is killed
this is how the tortoise turns into the hills

For each to dilate as the sugar fills
forward through Andromeda, still as the wind,
the blinding tinker does in the skin
and tells that the hill is a house on speed

Till the tiger’s surf finds tears in the reeds
and draws the surface through a dagger of pins
fashioned by the end, the porpoise spins
and drags the lake to find a rose

And drips off the burden of the far-off hose.

this is the envy of the starring loin
whatever the tolling of a rubbished groin,
still is the point of the turning world

Till rapiers paint the eye and dress the curled
and stage lemonades in a dust of dreams-
to hear a tap dripping in a house of screams.
this is the inevitable stable of the wretch

That dies for sweet love as the gibbets deck
each seal in groped cigars?
Be around
To speak about the soul,
Wake early and never suffer summer.
In the morning be as dead-eyed as the cold
Rebuke of nightingales. Be unfound
As whatever the soul suffers and
Whatever suffers thereafter. Roll
In early suppuration made.

In the early morning
Be alive as women walking
To the sanctuaries; alight
As a recorded touch of oil.
But tell the children nothing.
Write about the desert
And all that it extols. Coil
In the island; the
Island enchanted and unenchanted, the
Island inhabited and uninhabited, the
Island in the apple sun.

Say what is like the sea, like a river, like
A fountain in earphones, like
Taped cloud over the sun. by
Memory and mammary, transpose a gallery,
Overshadow the soul immediate and calm.

Your soul is no more than human.

The rising sky must be as a desert, be
So easily played on.

More at https://jimbellamy.simplesite.com.

In My Head? | Jim Bellamy - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

In My Head? | Jim Bellamy

And so the light falls
Like a cracker cracked in half. Even
Beneath the pen, the breathing hogs
Each moon of madness made. I
Have broken down the walls; acquiesced
Into the lottery of shambled figures.
Even I can’t taste the night.

Leaves rustle in my head.
Across my bed, nudity glitters.
Upon my shoulder, I say my thoughts
Uncensored by any dream and
Cross into oblivion. Why

Should emptiness ache like this?!

More at https://jimbellamy.simplesite.com.

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