Someone Else’s Problem

It’s just someone else’s problem

Someone else’s life

Someone else’s father

And someone else’s wife.

The man on the street

With the skeletal frame

Is pleading for money

As you hide your shame.

The TV shows an advert

Of African children crying

We change the channel

To forget they’re dying.

The woman next door

Is beaten black and blue

But you tell yourself

It’s nothing to do with you.

The people getting bombed

By your high school soldier friend

The gay guy round the block

Trying to hide and pretend.

The girl you called fat

Just threw up her dinner

While you judge her weight

She’s only getting thinner.

The pregnant teenage girl

That you called a slut

Is carrying her father’s child

And starting to give up.

The guy buying twenty cans

Of beer every night

Hears voices in his head

And drinks to calm his fright.

You’re in denial

Until it hits home

You’re the one crying

You’re the one all alone.

For so long you have tried

To shut out the pain

But it finds you in the end

And makes you go insane.

It’s not someone else’s problem

You’re the one with the scars

It’s not someone else’s pain

It comes from your heart.