Our Youth Need…

The young have not been so lucky,
their world defined by death and rage,
We had freedom, they have a cage,
locked up safe from the dying spree.

The fool and wisdom disagree,
on how to save democracy.
Our youth drown in hypocrisy,
as blue label fights red label.
They need foundations firm…stable,
with no games of bureaucracy.

I wrote this poem in part because of my son. A couple of months ago he came in contact with a classmate who had Covid-19. That of course meant he had to be quarantined. We all wore masks…because he’s a 16-year-old boy who forgets what meal of the day he’s eating. Meaning there was no way we were trusting him to wear a mask all the time. Things at school went downhill from there, well not all downhill, but a class here or there. He had to do remote learning and some teachers didn’t know how to use the equipment very well, and you can’t really learn Chemistry all that well from what is basically a skype call.

One teacher is a bit of a difficult one, and the boy has been stressed more than we realized. He was out two days sick, not from anything, just mentally psyched out and throwing up for two days. It turns out he has the hardest class schedule in his entire school, and it’s a college prep school. Imagine having 1 AP class, meaning a college credit class, the hardest class in the school, 3 Honors classes, and the rest College Prep classes except for Band where he’s an officer and section leader.

What we didn’t know was that while he was quarantined he was constantly worried he might end up with something that could potentially kill him. That on top of trying to keep up with two weeks of classwork and tests.

Anyway, that’s where we are. Just trying to get to winter break and a clean slate begins. We just hope his current slate isn’t a shattered mess. For a boy who has been identified as gifted, and identified as a Duke Tip student, and been in the national junior honor society and now Beta Club, this has been a huge blow for him.

How to write an Espinela or Décima poem.

Whether you enjoyed my poem or not, please click the link below to head to this week’s challenge page and visit some of the loyal in the comments who keep coming back to write using this style of poetry that is so accomodating to different ideas and more difficult than you may think to write. And it’s a great feeling to know you’re writing in a style created hundreds of years ago in Spain.

My entry for this week’s Décima Poetry Challenge NO. 34 STABLE.

© 2020- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.