LOST BOYS
By Eric F. Maxie
1: New Never
First stahl to the right
Then on ‘til mourning.
Fairies suck for pixie dust
And cry.
Our Darlings do
A drive by,
Spraying the corner that the Pickaninnies took
Where Tiger Lilly slings
That Captain Hook
And Toodles
Can’t find Wendy
Anywhere.
Life is no great adventure here.
2: A Thousand Words
He is not the baby boy,
Spit bubble laugh
In the “at three months” photograph.
He is no longer your young son smiling,
Boy bow-tied,
Believing bright futures,
Never breaking a rule
In the picture that’s marked
“Sunday School.”
Life for him is hard
And is not
Good.
His words
Don’t find dreams
Though he would wish joy from un-abiding things.
He is consumed by his fell anger.
He has let hate become his master.
He is not the laughing lad we knew,
Infant love of our human litter,
The tireless tyke,
Infiltrator of nest.
He is altogether strange to us,
Who at best are bitter
And wonder
How he went wrong.
On lonely days,
He drinks
And breaks the bottles
When the drink is gone.
He’ll smoke a J
Sometimes talk shit til night comes strong
To cool his brain.
On lonely nights, his drink is sin.
A lush of lies,
He hides hard heart
And chokes the hurts he can’t
Sustain.
His laughter makes the sound of
Pain.
3: Civil Wrongs
How do we mend
This broken mess of men:
This
Inverse
Medgar Evers-ness
And tend
This tied and twisted timid Emmett sTillness,
Bizarro
Malcolm X,
Lumumba or
Killed King?
What does
A Black man healed
Mean
In this perverted
Madness?
What spirit raises
Righteous men
From sadness,
Wretched,
Hate full hopelessness?
When bitter is best,
How do we heal
This kinship of helplessness that they feel?
4: First Fight!
He was not told that the spine was meant to be straight
That the knees
We’re meant to bend
So he walks in a hunch
Ready to pounce,
So he is not humble,
Does not know
God.
He was not told that
Head
Means the seat of reason,
That mind full magic is a mighty weapon.
He could not see his hand as an arrow
Or his foot as a path
So he kills his brother, so he
Succumbs to crack,
So he lacks direction
And can find no way to go.
He was not taught the dance of war,
The chant of battle,
The songs of long dead warriors
Like Malcolm,
Like Biko
So he sides with the enemy so
He will not fight and can not shield us.
He does not know
That there is a man beyond his concrete cocoon,
That there is a warrior waiting to be free of his prison
Like Lumumba
Like Mandela.
If only he will fight
If only we could arm him with an armor
Of self.
If only we could educate him to esteem.
If only he could see that he
Succeeds
A Savior;
Our security,
Our first defense.
If only he will fight
First fight
Like Martin
Or Marcus
For the redemption of a people,
First fight
Like a man
Who is no quasi contraband.
If only he will stand up
Now
And learn the dance of war,
The chant of battle,
The songs of long dead warriors.
“Lost Boys” is a poem that explores themes of poverty and violence in the context of the central image. Lost Boys deconstructs fairy tale images from Peter Pan as a commentary on the realities and manifested impacts upon a community, whose boys never become men.
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