Another mother can be heard weeping in the night, the darkness shrouding her pain, fears and questions….once again life has snatched her desires and dreams , taking from her the life she delivered from her loins. Her huddled form rising from a tear soaked pillow, she walks over to her bedroom window and peers out the sheet that covers it.
As she looks into the shadows of the night, the cracker box houses around her, she knows one of them soon will be acting out the re-run of this night. As numerous families grieve the loss of a loved one on foreign soil, we forget about the ones whom are lost on the battle grounds at home. Youth snatched from life before they’re able to complete their journey, see any of their dreams and desires come into fruition, before they’re able to create a legacy that will last for the generations to come. She looks up and down the street,….life isn’t suppose to be this way, when will it stop, when will it change….isn’t there one person who feels this way, whose tired of the pain and grieving? Our males either locked up or lying cold beneath the surface of the earth, their ghosts shrouded with pain, agony, and the tortured memories of unwritten chapters in life.
Younger and younger those within incarceration become, an empty shell of a soul that has no hope of ever being allowed to blossom, forever indebted to a judgment passed on them by the self righteous in society, the unforgiving. They learn all too well at a young age embedded bitterness of a disillusioned life, the fine line between love and hate. They learn all to well that the portraits in life’s gallery aren’t always what they seem, that beneath the canvas, lies shadows waiting to consume their lives, well before they’re able to grasp the true essence of their character and existence.
In a society filled with negativity, judgments, greed, corruption and destruction, they see little hope lying in the journey ahead of them. They feel their survival on this plane in life is contingent upon the models and portraits of survival around them. They follow the examples and directions which are placed before them. Drugs, terrorism, politics , corruption and negativity abound within their realms and domains of existence. They desperately reach out to grasp and grab what they can of a life that they feel is slipping away from their grasp, dreams and desires.Everywhere they turn in society they see portraits of negativity painted, within the realms of entertainment, media, classrooms and their environment.
As the mother drops the sheet down into place again, she shakes her head, takes the back of her hand and wipes the tears from her eyes and face. She remembers the stories told by her parents of the fights for equal rights and some decorum of respect within humanity. The many struggles , sacrifices and inhumanity they absorbed for the good of the “Whole” of the people. She wonders what these soldiers and dreamers in life who are still here to see the product of their efforts feel about life today?
What happened to the Portraits, Images and Visions of the “Innocence of Children”. Just as their parents are forced to become more and more productive within society to meet the demands of survival, to make ends meet, more and more children are being forced to take on roles before their time, conditioned to become adults well ahead of their years and wisdom. They are no longer allowed to be children, but little soldiers within life, to live within the shadows of the adults around them.
I recently had a 28 yr old man , a Sr. from Penn State tell me, that incarceration today has a portrait of glorification placed upon it and that’s backwards. That his father told him “nothing good happens within prison.”
As children are placed within detention centers, reformatories and prisons, they become victims of judgments, time and actions, unlike the fighting chance that was afforded to them upon the streets and home front.
With the resounding echo of a gavel , unwritten chapters in the history books are stifled, our dreams and hopes are captured within the nightmares of the social boogey man, and the future of a nation relies upon a fairytale.
BY: LADY GRAY
http://ladygrayls.blogspot.com/?spref=tw
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