FORGOTTEN

Like a refugee in his own land
A land that has forgotten him
The care child wanders with no hand…
To hold when it is cold or to stop the blows from an unseen foe that strikes! 

Strikes in the night when curled he lays… on a cardboard box
A box wet and stained with rain and tears in a lonely town on an un-named street

Forgotten

No longer remembered by “the state” his corporate parent!… (who arrived too late) 
To save him

To save him from the monsters in his head 
The monsters who used to join him in his soiled single bed 
When he was young…. 
oh so young!

Too old now
They celebrate!
they can sign him off their books
with an “almost” clean slate
Hurray!
A big fat tick in the corporate box  
(Ofsted regulated!
What a load of nobs!)
(Who regulates Ofsted anyway! He says.
Irony

He is now 21 the “job” is done
He slips into anonymity 
A nameless face in a human sea
Not so many friends

Definitely No family!

The monsters return
No longer under his quilt but still embedded in his
train wrecked head
They would not give therapy when he was 3 
too young they said 
Would not give it when he was 5, 8, 10 
Onto the tablets they said was best for him then.

The tablets that numbed the pain and gave them the excuse to release a sigh
and say…. 
Cured? 
Cured? No, repressed

Repressed by chains of numb and dead
But numb and dead he stayed 
Until the bells of age 21 sang their toll and sealed his fate…. 
Out you go they say
There’s your flat and a ton or two to see you on your merry way

The way to homelessness because he was not equipped to make the perilous journey into “adulthood”

He forgot his pills and the walls caved in 
as the monsters were not gone they were caged within

The chaos unleashed on him like bike chain whips on baby skin 

Where can he go where can he BEGIN?

So instead he curls holding a syringe as his water bottle on his cardboard box 
A box wet with rain and tears in a lonely town on an un named street