20150620 (fraud)

Three hundred sixty-five sixty-six days

Aren’t enough to cover the causes

In the world needing help. 

Don’t get bent out of shape if you do nothing 

For World Refugee Day today

You might have slept too late 

Went working in the woods 

Missed all the messages

iPad needed charging

Had a horrible hangover 

Genuinely ill. Pity the publicist 

Who’s charged to turn your attention 

From these starving babies 

To those starving babies 

Even just for one day

There must be some better way

To delineate all the strains of suffering 

So we can get a lousy day off 

From world woe go to a game

Play with the kids take the wife to a movie

Have a nice supper a glass of wine

And not have nagging in the back of our brain 

Our duty to the less fortunate and the forgotten

Surely they’ll keep ’til tomorrow. Don’t 

Tell me how many will die every hour 

I delay I can’t bear the thought of sixty more 

Lost while I put off writing the check

Authorizing the charge or sending the sum

Another way preventing a war staffing a

Suicide hotline supporting research

Among the thousands maybe hundreds are cons

Those kids in Guatemala you thought got new 

Shoes were pimps in Bangkok. The disabled vet’s 

New wheelchair doesn’t exist but you helped

A grifter put tires on the Ferrari

A Genuine Thank You. Can We Count

On Your Generosity Next Easter

They ask with no end of guile 

Once they’ve got a sucker 

To reel in year after year

All it takes is a post office box a flair 

For telling a tear-jerking story

A computerized list 

And a mail order printer 

Who doesn’t ask questions

You’re not the kind to hear every plea

You turn down beggars in the street

Urge them to split before you call the cops

Who truly knows which panhandler’s

The Christ if not all of them somedays

When your sympathy’s jangled a little too loose

Believe me I’ve checked those appeals

Given sometimes on a wink and a prayer

Still I’m not entirely convinced 

It’s the thought that counts

I hope when they get it they understand

I can think all day and not make a buck

c. J.S.Manista, 2015