The Prince’s Woes

Living in strife was not my life

At the very worst I didn’t receive the tea timely

My father feared the outside, the obvious strife

So he hid me away from the world, it was ugly

 

My father thought I’d be a better heir to the throne

Especially if I couldn’t see the woes and problems outside

But as I grew up, these, notions of being stuck in the palace

Are a notion that I decided that were broken and thrown.

 

Late in the evenings I sneak out of the palace

Not for a tryst with the world, but just to see

But it simply wasn’t what I could of imagined, this place

So many hungry people, death, disease, nothing serene

 

Men sit on the side of streets, hands outstretched

Women seemingly wait until a man gives her money and away they go

Men chopping wood until their backs became wretched

And moreso with the men and women in the fields, as they dig on their hoes

 

The world made me feel awful, constant struggles to stay alive and earn a wage

“Have I really been living in this world all this time” I asked himself.

But indeed that was the case, I was entombed, so I decided it was time to change

How would being pampered help me to understand the world itself?

 

I donned some humble garbs and I sat on the street and suffered.

Such as many I saw had done before, though to start with I was obviously new to this.

But I continued and my father never found me, his rage unbuffered

Despite this, I moved away to smaller towns and villages, other leisures I’d miss

 

Hardship was my way to understand how the world worked

And in my time I developed various mantra and the philosophies

Humbleness became achieved goal, from princed to vagrant, unperked

And I planned to show the world my ideas, but not as trophies

 

So I sat under a tree for 42 days, meditating and fasting

And I saw the world through another method, enough to make others laugh perhaps, ha.

I learnt much, but I will not keep this poem lasting

My name is Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as Buddha