Wrong From The Start

An award of circumstances
Broken home, broken dreams
Out of system, out of options
Brute instinct holding the wheel

Not a young idealist
But a teen nihilist
Rules of the rulers
A glass wall at the zoo

He was wrong from the start
Scarred for life

Gangs as a family
Crime as a necessity
Contempt as a shield
Fear as mother’s milk

An assembly line of errors
Terror as a tool
Delusions of power
And one mistake too many

Into the system
Written off the streets
Confinement of actions
Just waiting for the final beat

Another story told
So wrong from the beginning

How easy it would have been
To divert the river while upstream

Out of options, out of time, survive and d-deny in your mind
Home with dad playing catch with a stone, yelling don’t come back, you won’t come back
Father farther, a fitting homophone, alone, alone, you’re left on your own
Something’s wrong with the boy they say, as you look back at them in dismay

Left to act the way you did, you only did what you seemed fit
Rules are for fools, and you got the tools, the tools to bend the fools’ rules
Look at them looking in contempt, what they made isn’t what they dreamt
You got what they deserved, that’s why they’re so unnerved

As the gavel drops, there are teardrops, on the cheeks of lady justice

Since the starting line, he was always left behind
Either cap in hand, handicapped or
Out of norm, eventually trapped
And we dam the river downstream

JR