From the Shadows

From the shadows The taste of bitterness lingers on tongues Before it bathes them in anxieties And they emerge stripped of mind, Altering into mindless fiends As hope drowns in the murky waters They once come from. Mothers cry sad songs As sons and daughters were ripped from breasts Forced into the lives their keepers know too well And those resisting struggle for sustenance, With legs open for a few pennies in pockets To chase the hunger away. As fathers flee like insects Their young left in dustbins like rubbish To propagate in the waste they were born to, Falling astray becoming wild creatures And gangs welcome them with a warm embrace Taught to sling guns and knives until They rest in small graves. From the shadows they dwell Trapped without hope.