Street Poverty

The colour of poverty is brown, dusty brown, dark brown, the dull brown of layered dirt, rotting roof, hopeless brown speckled with slimy green

the texture of poverty is grainy,

dusty like the streets of untarred roads that stretch for miles and miles

the smell of poverty is the gutter smell of feces, stagnant water, rotten food, lack, and indolence

the aura of poverty is squalor, sloth, despair, despondence, the folding of hands despair, the heavy sigh of despair and bleakness,

the people of poverty are defeated, wearied and weighed down by Life and its Sisyphuisan existence

broken minds, healthy bodies  from bacteria resistance, 

defeated eyes, young-looking old men in threadbare clothes,

perpetual suffering mothers

children too wise and too old,

and the life-hardened young drugged up and soulless whose scars tell the tales of murders, thefts and stabbings, the dogs' litter starved, pregnant, and vacuous like the inhabitants of Poverty.