A Kid that Stopped Hoping (narrative poetry)
Once there was a little kid that stopped hoping.
His name they never knew,
but they found him covered up in something
green, brown, and blue.
The first man who saw him lying
watched him there for hours,
he thought the boy was day-dreaming
or looking at the flowers.
As he turned his mower round
and headed for the back
the helpless man, felt a cloud,
precipitating fast.
He wondered what this little kid
was doing in the grass.
He couldn’t know that little boy
was really dying fast.
In another second he may have left his job
and went to see his face
and ask the kid if all was good
and if he was really safe.
But the sun was hot and his mind went back
to cutting down the grass.
For all too quickly did it grow
under Summer’s friendly glass.
Another man walking his dog
saw the kid lying still.
He kept his Lab on a leash
and held him back at will.
He was strangely tall and stalky
for a man of stooping age.
His height bought him a fairly good view
of the boy lying in his grave.
But as the dog was barking
this taller man moved until
the very top of his balding head
went creeping under the next hill.
So the boy who lay alive and dead
both and really none,
fully asleep and dead awake
blinking at the sun.
The kid who was just an outsider
lying in the grass
attracting looks from this one and that one,
but never once a question asked
found himself on a boundary
quite alone in fact
and quite out of necessity
lay supine on his back.
He’d run all the way from one place
to get to this his other
he’d run on empty stomach
he’d run on little water
he didn’t have a penny to spend
and he didn’t have a name
this kid had lost all hope in life
and couldn’t stand to stay.
So while the sun beamed hotter
under its Summer friendly glass
the kid himself grew darker
His skin crow feather black.
It was a hot day and a long one too
with not many people around
the ones that had come along and seen him
let linger what they found
All it would have taken to save him
was one hand giving notice
Showing the kid what hope is
giving the kid his focus
But between the two men who could have
one was dropping quotas
and the other too busy filling his brown bag
with the stuff his fore fathers wrote us.
His name they never knew,
but they found him covered up in something
green, brown, and blue.
The first man who saw him lying
watched him there for hours,
he thought the boy was day-dreaming
or looking at the flowers.
As he turned his mower round
and headed for the back
the helpless man, felt a cloud,
precipitating fast.
He wondered what this little kid
was doing in the grass.
He couldn’t know that little boy
was really dying fast.
In another second he may have left his job
and went to see his face
and ask the kid if all was good
and if he was really safe.
But the sun was hot and his mind went back
to cutting down the grass.
For all too quickly did it grow
under Summer’s friendly glass.
Another man walking his dog
saw the kid lying still.
He kept his Lab on a leash
and held him back at will.
He was strangely tall and stalky
for a man of stooping age.
His height bought him a fairly good view
of the boy lying in his grave.
But as the dog was barking
this taller man moved until
the very top of his balding head
went creeping under the next hill.
So the boy who lay alive and dead
both and really none,
fully asleep and dead awake
blinking at the sun.
The kid who was just an outsider
lying in the grass
attracting looks from this one and that one,
but never once a question asked
found himself on a boundary
quite alone in fact
and quite out of necessity
lay supine on his back.
He’d run all the way from one place
to get to this his other
he’d run on empty stomach
he’d run on little water
he didn’t have a penny to spend
and he didn’t have a name
this kid had lost all hope in life
and couldn’t stand to stay.
So while the sun beamed hotter
under its Summer friendly glass
the kid himself grew darker
His skin crow feather black.
It was a hot day and a long one too
with not many people around
the ones that had come along and seen him
let linger what they found
All it would have taken to save him
was one hand giving notice
Showing the kid what hope is
giving the kid his focus
But between the two men who could have
one was dropping quotas
and the other too busy filling his brown bag
with the stuff his fore fathers wrote us.