For JR, my friend, my brother, and my son.

 

A Child In Need

Throughout the years I will decry

Powers charged with nurturing

A helpless little boy

 

A child lost in this cold, hard world

Wanting help, receiving none

From parents who neglect

 

Contempt, ridicule, disrespect

Piled high on his small shoulders

Too small for this burden.

 

He lives in his isolation

Crying in the midnight black

When weakness does not show

 

Heart-felt love, friendship, all foreign

Deprived of all children’s needs

He withers in his cave

 

Desperately he reaches out

Beyond his white-washed prison

Looking for what he lacks

 

Screaming for love, but to deaf ears

Not wanting to hear his cries

Ignoring his pleading

 

With nothing left, he turns away

Tired of facing the world

He throws his life away

 

After all is complete he sleeps

Buried without living life

A tragic loss of a friend.

 

Mourning tears never cease to fall

Down my cheeks or in my heart

A part of me dies too

 

I’ll never hear him laugh again

I will never see him smile

I will never see him again.

 

-Dewey