MULE

Draw the seared tracks in pools of his    
Lethargy one minute, through dwindling    
Piles of emeralds & rubies, the next.    
   
My nephew Kyle could've been anything.    
A mulatto baby out of wedlock,    
Not in the social outcast sense, but    
   
In the way his (also) mulatto father    
Abandoned him, after trying to kidnap him    
   
From his mother in a parking lot in    
Broad daylight, traumatizing him at age 3.    
   
He was beautiful in ev'ry shade the    
word is meant to convey.      
   
He became a child model, and appeared    
In television bit parts and walk-ons.    
   
Perhaps he would wind up on theater    
Screens like his father.      
Seems incredibly long ago;    
   
A length of rope seems as long when    
Someone you love, with his whole life    
   
Before him, opens his arms to free fall    
Ev'ry minute for the following years,    
   
Still dazzling me with his dimpled smile    
That meant nothing to him.    
   
Late last summer, with the hindering of    
Drugs & drink, and clinical depression,    
   
The drop from a freeway overpass    
Was about to be the poster child for    
   
Why innocence of the core often    
Loses out on the slippery slopes of    
Misguided intervention.      
   
Caught by the scruff of his black hoodie,  
His physical body was pulled off    
The barrier wall, and saved.      
   
But the soul we never see slipped through    
And fell far below to the gravel road    
Where tractors passed each day.    
   
The images change like the chamber    
In a revolver of Russian roulette    
That holds the only bullet.    
   
It's only one, but one is all you need    
To snuff the third eye.    
   
I don't care to have the other two    
Now that I know that in his mind,    
God's little drug mule's into fisting.    
   
The last time I got to hold him    
For what must have seemed to him    
An interminable lapse,    
   
I knew all we could hope for was    
That he might stay alive.    
   
I felt selfish to wish him to exist.    
I would've wanted more if it were me.      
   
But for my sweet brilliant nephew,    
His life was our loss, all of us.
   
.