Childhood Haven

Shannon Hicks, Newtown Bee / AP Photo

Childhood Haven

In a dreadful torment of anxiety
the parents arrive to seek
out and collect their young.
Children sent off only hours
earlier to their Kindergarten,
grade I and grade II classes
to be inducted through the
social and academic skills of 
their teachers into society's
broad contract.  Those parents
who return home empty-armed
with broken spirits are
those whose children were
oh so briefly exposed to a
fiercely vicious demonstration
of failure in the social contract.
Their deaths speak of the
unspeakable, a lethal crisis
of default, of a deranged mind
setting off on a psychotic spiral
defying rationality, denying
the basis of humanity,
destroying life and leaving
the future deprived of hope.