What Will We Do?

What will we do
to save our children
from the monsters that hide
not under beds
nor in the shadows on the wall
but prowl the streets
and wait for the yellow bus
and that one last lingering child
who dillydallies
jumping over puddles
skipping down the road
singing silly songs
she only learned today?

What will we do
to hold back mothers and fathers
from taking the law into their hands
when we ourselves have decided
to join them?

How do we turn this world
upside down and inside out again
and will it ever, ever end . . .
the sacrifices of the innocents among us?

What will we do
when the seas dry up
and there is no more salt
left for tears?
What will we do
when poets are no longer needed?

Joanne Cucinello 2009

Where Have All the Children Gone?

I know so many of you must be thinking the same thing when you watch the news on TV or your computers . . . maybe even some are still getting the paper thrown at the doorstep every morning. Where have all the children gone? How can we save Childhood?
It's as if the Pied Piper has come to claim them for his own and lead them off to some strange Never Never Land promising to make them forget they were ever children. Little pseudo adults in Jr.High mimicking their sexy heroes and heroines on the Silver Screen and You Tube, feeling inept and unpopular if they aren't sexually active yet and taunting unyielding peers to jump with them to the rythmn of the Piper.
When a 13 year old can be so glued to her email and have so little self-love that she'd let herself be tormented for 5 weeks in the seclusion of her "privacy" . . . believing what is written to her about her "worthlessness" . . . so much so that she could end her own life! . . . Don't you want to SCREAM!! . . . IS ANYBODY HOME?!!
What kind of monsters are prowling in the dark of children's minds and on the Internet? What needs to change in family life and the loving of our precious children and how do we work together to find the answers?