A Billion Obese People Walk The Earth

(Written during the time the Egyptian Revolution looked like the real deal. Yes, I was naive.)

A billion obese people walk the earth
Eating more than their health can sustain
Eating more than the world can sustain
Feeding on the blood of the world.

Meanwhile, stones fly in the shadow
Of the Pyramids. Ancient, and built of
Ancient stones
Hauled up by scrawny slaves
From the great Mother Nile.

What would they say today
These nameless faceless unknown slaves
Who being nameless and faceless yet
Built monuments for the ages?
What would freedom mean to them?

Is freedom but a word?

Would the food the billion obese consume
Mean more to those slaves

Than the blood and courage
Of the men and women standing up to guns and tanks?

Empires rose and fell in the shadow of the Pyramids
Empires meant to last till the end of Time.

Ozymandias, Rameses, Caesar, Napoleon
Have come and gone. But the Pyramids, built by slaves,
Endure.

Today’s Empire, halfway round the world
Will fall, and the blood and courage
Of the people of Egypt shows the way.

But if you could turn time back

Back to beginnings, and ask one of those naked slaves
What he’d rather have, 
Freedom or food to fill his stomach
What would he have chosen?

To a slave, what is freedom?
Is it just a word?

The billion obese weigh down the earth with their
Obscene weight.

The Pyramids
Endure.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2011