A billion people in the world
I knew nothing about it.
Until I realized it was pretty important.
I see you where we were in the 1920s.
Ready to burgeon, and bring your people food.
Ready to bring your people houses.
Shelter.
A poem I read spoke eagerly about maybe this being the year
That India will have its stand in the market.
A drought I read about, was bad.
Yet, freely you have the press…
You have your free internet.
You have your freedoms to read just about every poem I’ve ever written.
Gladly, I want you to have my style home…
I want you to have rain,
And cornfields, and cotton fields
And peach trees, and vineyards.
I want your poor to be fed.
I want your people to not live in sheds.
I want them to have nice sized homes.
It’s a lie that you can’t… it really is.
There’s plenty of land, and there’s plenty of air
To give you all nice homes.
Communism won’t do it…
Capitalism might.
But… You’ll have to patronize artists.
You’ll have to patronize hard work.
If you want my type of house…
If you want my privileges—
And I’m privileged, along with all of America—
You have to take your freedom of speech
And speak out with every ounce of who you are.
You have to understand, in my society it is not unjust.
But injustice exists.
Your country, injustice exists, much worse than in mine.
But… I want you to eat.
I want you to have vineyards, and shelters.
But you have to speak out.
You have to participate in your government.
You have to, like me, talk your lips off…
You have to make a lot of wrong predictions
Before you can start getting them right…
You have to frustrate entire countries.
I fight for you,
For China,
For Russia,
For America,
For Brazil,
And all of Africa
Asia, Europe…
Because I have a good life.
And I can’t believe that you don’t.
But, if I’m leveled into poverty
After a significant amount of effort and hard work…
What does that say for you?
You may not hate me…
You may actually like me…
But I want all of you to eat
And even be Christian…
Yes, because I know your religion frustrates you…
But you know as well as I do that there is a spiritual truth.
Why not just bow to one God?
Instead of many?
Why not bow down to Christ?
I have a notion to believe
That’s why my society prospered,
And as we run away from that fairness
And equity of hard work ethics
And food is plentiful…
Jesus brings rain.
I’ve prayed for it several dozen times
Silently, so nobody would hear.
Precisely what I pray happened.
I have no explanation for it.
The mantel of my religion
And my society’s success
Rests on you… here it’s slipping away.
Where you are, I can see it happening.
Remember that Israel, our nation
Did a lot of hard work to make a desert green.
But, rains testify one last thing
That for them to come, there must be a blessing.
Here, there will probably be forests that turn to deserts.
The opposite is true. A desert can turn into a forest.
I can testify, that if it’s not the case
Than the rains that I’ve prayed for
Must not have shed upon the emerald grass.
I don’t want to come off pretentious.
I truly just want to bring Christianity
Rain, food…
And I can’t. You can’t.
Only Christ can.
And He will if you accept Him.
That’s a promise.
B. K. Neifert 