The Child Remains
So I haven't spoken to you all for a while. Fear not, I still live. More than live, I write! Yes, I have a book coming soon and I have been busy working on that. Until then, I return to you all with a poem. Most of my poems go up on instagram, but this one I give to all of you first. I hope you like it...
The Child Remains
And we are frail creatures, us humans
Beleaguered by neurosis and ambition
We let our selves down
Fail each other frequently
Haunted by the ghosts of dreams,
And the ideals of youth’s naivety
Are crushed daily
Weighed down by the mass of our lofty principles
Scarred by our own matchless ethics
We grind against each other
Wearily unsettled as we grow
Comparisons and judgements that decay from within us, and without
Foreign assaults compounded by the self
Bled dry by vampire alienations
Dividing our hearts and carving our past from our futures
We watch ourselves from afar
Watch as the child leaves wet footprints in the flattened grass
Look on as the concrete and magazines breach the forest fortifications
Look on as the synthetic consumes us
Cover our eyes, cowering beneath downy sheets
As emotions betray us
Our cracked minds acquiescing to self-grown brutalities
Watch on bitterly whilst acceptance floods our pores
Settling for a world we do not want
While the child left behind laughs and runs headlong into the whitewash, unafraid
And the world celebrates our uniqueness
Rewards us by buying our innocence
Sells it on for false profit
Decadence, toxic pleasures, and hypocrisy invade
Insidious traps born within our bones, are sprung, wantonly
Side-tracked, we wander from liberty
Willingly, we let the child down
Pretence a smokescreen
Lies, a shield against our demons
Yet the child remains
Its honour and innocent dreams imbedded in our cells
No matter how deep the pit, and despite every transgressive action or ill word spoken
The sleepwalk is easy
The concrete and magazines urge the zombie march
They advertise the pit
Sell the fog
Yet the child ever remains
And sees the light through all
Rays of joy spearing through the gloom
The child sees the light in all
Virtues passed down from the tribe besiege us
And the child sees hope and redemption in every shadow
Imagines worlds unseen in the veins of leaves fallen from trees anonymous
Touches the fire of beauty with unmarred fingertips
Clings not, needs not
Hold no lusts, no heavy loads
And no matter the concrete world
The child remains
Despite the cyclone
The child remains
Will always remain
M. Greenwell
