This is Drissa. I would like you all to meet him today.
i103.photobucket.com/albums/m127/SheFlys/drissalg.jpg
As we sit down at our delicate tables of strong wood
Tasting the bitter-sweet chocolate that looks so good
Can you feel the flesh tearing from each block you bite?
Another child goes down into a blinded mind's sight
Shipped around the world from U.S.A. to the Ivory Coast
For people just like you, who sit, and take toast
Forgetting whose tears are born in every piece eaten
A child stolen from the grips of love-abused-mistreated
There they are in a distant farm's sheltered, hollow life
And here we are thinking our life is full of pain and strife
Let me take you to the places that have agonizing screams
Hoping they could wake up, and be away from this dream
Brothers without a hand to hold through the cold days
Sisters searching through clouded memories slipping away
Beaten for cheap productions of a food we all consume
As a child feels their fate before their time is through
Now when you buy a bar of chocolate, think of Drissa
He is as real as your: Tom, Erin, Larry, and Theresa
He was not given a choice for a full, happy life
It was stolen in a photo from cuts of a knife
Drissa gives to you all his many desiring thanks
As another child is quickly erased by cruel yanks
Go ahead, and taste your bitter-sweet candy special made
Just know that most chocolates are plucked by a 'Child Slave'!!
I recently had read this article maybe over a week ago. I never even knew myself that chocolate(candy I eat) was made by these beautiful children enslaved. Now, I see chocolate is not as sweet as I first was raised to understand. It is harvested by children who had 'no choice' in working in cocoa farms, until they die. These children die for you all enjoy the simplicities of life. Such as:chocolate, clothes, rice, etc.
They each bare the marks that will never be seen by many. But, the scares in turn never heal. It is etched into each child snatched from countries far and wide. Forever crying for this nightmare to end.
This is a list of companies who do not use children to harvest their cocoa. Or anything in their candies.
www.radicalthought.org/A55868/cocoa.nsf/noslavepg!OpenPage
This is alist that some may'Use' Children in their manufacturing of candies. You will be surprised if you have one of these products in your home right now.!!!
www.radicalthought.org/A55868/cocoa.nsf/likelypg!OpenPage
www.radicalthought.org/A55868/cocoa.nsf/likelypg!OpenPage
Author notes
In one day a child pours their sweat and tears for you to eat. Can you stomache the pains in every bite you taste now?
Written October 24th, 2006
A contest entry
- Oath Makers To Halt Child Slavery Put Poetry In This Archive by Iohagh.
850 points, ended November 15, 2006, 48 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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I never knew that child slavery was used to harvest cocoa beans... I find it very sad and depressing that people would use children that are so beautiful and emparative to our future to make an item that is so easily consumed and thrown away. Thank you for informing me of these things.
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I just saw this on yahoo today and thought of you and your poem.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061111/bs_nm/food_chocolate_dc Good that there's some news on this
Good luck in the contest!
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Darling
You ruined my drink
this corruption is pervasive/
Now I just think
we consumers act evasive.
Smoosh
Janet -
Oh, I saw his picture when I researched my poem too. His lovely face, and beaten back made me cry. I never knew of this until I started reading about child slavery. Your poem brings out the message loud and clear, I am so glad you put a link to his picture at the top. Thank you for the candle link also, I am going to check it out right now.
Susie -
Admring and bitter sweet words. You have given me something to look upon. I desire chocolate, but as to reading your thoughts into the minds of children. I do not prefer to taste the delicacy as of this moment. Knowing a child suffered for me to have this enjoyment. I thank you for enlightning me on this. It was a truely impactable poem.
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I imagine normal starvation
while chocolate is made
at a cocoa plantation
to slaves sweets forbade.
AT
In honor to the way, Janet comments upon poems with poems, I did this for you and I am Janet's mentor and uncle who will be judging with her this contest while she is on vacation this next week. I will be extending it so she can adjudge all finals herself. Welcome to the competition.
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