the children raise the village.

I am worried about my little sister

With each miniature push-up bra

I see her tuck into her mahogany drawers

I am worried

With each brush stroke

That shadows eyes

And hides lips from their innocence

I am worried

With each facebook comment

From eighth grade hormones

Boys playing out her picture

Like filthy magazines

They stole from dad and hid under their boxspring

I am worried

For the world she will grow up in

They say it takes a village to raise a child

But now our children raise our villages

As they pick them up

From underneath

As they’ve rooted anguish deep

And suddenly tables are turned

As brother and sister sit at the head

And mom and dad fight over green beans

The children cry out

As their parents tune out

And their only solution is

To let their friends outsource love like it’s a drug

Selling a hug for a blowjob behind the portables after school

Because this is what love means to them

Because attention is a hot commodity

So they sell it like smuggled imports

Staining white fabric and hoping that they

Can fix futures with Clorox bleach pens

But they’re too young to know that it doesn’t work that way

That if you do something because it feels good

Then end up raising a child while you are still a child

The children raise the village

That if you do something because it feels good

And you end up with elephant imagery

As a large trunk pumps your stomach

Because your time on earth just went backwards

The children raise the village

That if you do something because it feels good

And put down that little girl by telling her she’s ugly

By telling her to go die

As she sits lonely at lunch time in libraries

The children raise the village

Because the village gives up

Because the village is corrupt with self-taught hatred

We will not stand for anxiety

That our children will create suicidal holocausts

Because we must dig them out from the wet ground

Like malformed seeds

We must tend to the garden and stamp out weeds

We must water the children with love that feeds

We must begin to raise the children again

Before they raise us.