Africa's Kids

Her kids have been stricken with
disease so strange,
even the littlest ones have succumbed
to its vehement rage.
The kids' innocence was stolen from them,
in more ways than one: molested and raped by sinister hands,
their childhood being taken away,
and fanning the fire of a laden
disease called AIDS.

She cries for her kids,
her moans being heard in the blackness
of the night.
She bemoans the unfairness
that has been bequeathed
to them, but she is lowly, what else
can she do?
A hole burns through her bony cheeks
as she sees the ridicule that her kids
endure at the mouths of the blissfully boorish
few who don't understand their plight,
and the years that it rends.

She pleads for someone
to help her kids, to save them in any way,
they have been thrown by the wayside for
far too long, and she avidly prays
that kindness will infuse the coldness
of someone, somehow, today.
She suffers as she watches her kids feeble bodies dying,
another innocent life was snatched away
by a callous disease called AIDS.

If there is one, only one out there who'll
listen, who'll open their mind,
please labor for Africa's kids,
and look deep within to find
the will to speak on Africa's behalf,
to bring an ended to the dreaded vine
of sickness, and pray for healing from
the fiend known as AIDS. Awry
they have become,
but they are lowly, what else really
can they do?