the poetry of children.

breaking schemas
and
the molding of tomorrow’s youth
into plastic soldiers
with replaceable, interchangeable personalities,
guns, and names.
marching away into the eve
of tomorrow’s dawn,
our
children’s poetry
will be
bullets and gunshots ricocheting off the walls
that once supported dreams.

left trying to decipher,
marks on the wall,
messages in graffiti,
if there was ever any
meaning.
cavemen left their marks on walls,
but these new scars relate misguided, disenchanted,
disenfranchised urban youth, revenge on the concrete
built on superficial ideals,
wasted energy, fading hope, and savage inequalities.

historians will remain in awe
at stains of blood,
of murder filled books juxtaposed with fairy tales.
and these stories are yet to be recorded and written.
depending on who dictates the future,
and how much everyone’s allowed to know,
they may never get written.

thus the
children’s poetry
must not fall on
or off
deaf ears,
so that deviant behavior and memory
will continue to remind
history,
and perhaps the whole conscious
of present society,
of those ignored, gentrified, and pushed to the outskirts
until permeating the psyche.
being that truth cannot be
hidden or buried,
children’s poetry
will come out beating
to rhythms the color of love
that most people have already long forgotten.
beatings and rhythms,
washing out
the bitterness the present has left us.
or maybe it’s just me that keeps hearing
the same thing,
the same song
that everyone’s been singing.
all the radio’s been playing.
dewey would argue what the schools have been teaching
for centuries since the romans and greeks,
or what corporate entities dictate through promoting.

because
nobody’s been listening,
nobody is listening,
nobody is listening
to the
children’s poetry.

cause what could they possibly teach anybody?

the
children’s poetry,
strange mutterings,
frequencies,
but transmissions
have had a tendency of being
intercepted,
and thus the message has yet to be
fully understood.
but children still believe in poetry.
translating messages for history,
some must start then decoding these writings and movements
before an eternal silence befalls us all.
trying to figure
children’s poetry,
already hiding in alleys,
break dancing, and drawing on walls.
trained to be just like little adults.
learning quickly to bully and scheme,
how to politic and maneuver,
aaaarrrggghhhhh.
next comes the nervous breakdown.
screaming, shouting, shooting in schools.

wait.
it’s already happening.
wait.

because
nobody’s been listening,
nobody is listening,
nobody is listening
to the
children’s poetry.

listening to the static off the vinyl
interwoven into the grooves
until foundations come down crumbling
off the bass
from the
children’s poetry.
yelling to be recognized
as a single living identity, entity,
independent of society’s standards and schemas
of how children are supposed to be.
the whole of society seems bent and content with silencing
what echoes tremble in the voice of
children’s poetry.
dancing, running, playing, exploring, discovering
without guides, barriers, or grown ups
at peace to develop like haiku:

the child once had thoughts
till order became borders
the child could not cross.

the child still has dreams,
but rules are raised up like walls.
free the child in me.

please.

free the child in me.
please. free the child in me. please.
free the child in me.

free the child in me.
please. free the child in me. please.
free the child in me.

9.24.04.