The Ways of a Black Heart

( prose poetry )
 
 
Why have you cowered for so long? Leniency reigned through his tender years, it’s all he’s ever known, you can’t blame him.
 
Yet now you call upon an army, to bring reason down to bear, and also raise up, to wake up! But it’s not meant to happen that way and that’s why it never does. A half-hearted intervention.
 
You and his father think that outsiders alone will and should pick up your mess? To lay down the law to a boy who you’ve instilled in him a sense of privilege - of entitlement?  
 
Who does that and still tells themselves it’s for the love of the child, of any child? Based on such mindset, you can’t give him even a ghost of a chance of surviving in this world at the rate you’ve been going.  
 
If he laughs, mocking you in disbelief, you need to make him see the shadow that casts across your face and hear it in your voice like the frost that would have chilblains set into a soul.  
 
You need to let him know the ways of a black heart before the onset of the folly you have allowed. The list you’ve given me, a litany. Your legacy on how to raise children to bear your cross. That others with evil intent, to let their scorn for you take flight.  
 
Abducting the innocent who you thought were protected by their parents with unbridled spending yet hobbled morals no matter how well-intended you try to believe. Bring your child to the very altar you now plead for him to be saved from?  
 
So, you want the shit scared out of him without the laying on of unclean hands do you?  Look around dear, neither of you have had clean hands.  
 
Bringing innocent souls into the world till the obvious had breathed its foil breath into your home where your babies haven’t been able to learn any better. No better than their parents, so what do you expect?  
 
Just short of killing this predator with your own bare hands, unholy measures must be considered.  Plain talk of feeble threats simply weakens chances, and impresses your son still further to the other side.  
 
I don’t know who else besides me you’ve heard back from since you put the word out in your desperate way, because you need to be ready to listen long and hard before you have me in your ranks.
 
Before you put your boy up against the wall and I send out far more than I did at you just now.  If you want this to work, better get seriously humble and ready to steel yourself,
 
For the day when your child actually hopes for your forgiveness. For that’s the moment you’ll also pray to dear God that you will receive his.  Now then...
 
Have I got the bloody job?
 
 
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