empty stomach

I look around me
and all I see
sometimes
is hunger -
in little kids
getting bored
in a blink,
in tottering elders
locking out death
in every breath,
in hapless youth
wandering listless
upon shifting sands,
in obsessive seekers
searching for a musk
they cannot smell,

yes, I see
hungry eyes,
hungry hands,
hungry feet,
hungry mouths,
hungry ears,
hungry skin,
hungry heads,
growing tentacles,
groping
for something,
for anything,
to hold on to,
wanting
all the time,
to suck,
to suckle,
to be filled -

empty stomachs
of everything,
burgeoning
like mushrooms,
not knowing
how to be
empty
or full,

only propelled
and shoved around
by an unstoppable avarice
to latch on,
to own something,
to hold onto something,
they can never catch
or call their own.