rich quatrone | what we do to children

WHAT WE DO TO CHILDREN

Sandusky and Paterno surprise everyone.
Then, tell me, why don’t thy surprise me?
Shock me, yes. Surprise, no.
Read Criminal Schools, my play.
Look at Iraq and Afghanistan.
Too much of a stretch for you?
What, that we should have violently
barged into two poor nations for the sake
of oil and future markets and turned them
into chaos.
What of the children in those countries?
And what of the young people here, almost
all of them poor, who go to fight these wars,
if you can call them legitimately wars, which
implies equal armies in combat, and learn to
kill and destroy, who themselves are killed,
who are maimed both physically and emotionally,
only to return to America and receive poor medical
attention or none? And what of their families, these
existentially courageous young people whose courage
could and should have been put to much better
use and guided by elders in this country?
But, then, we do not have elders, do we?
We have “senior citizens,” people not even afforded
the dignity of being old women and old men and,
yes, elders with wisdom we make a place for in
our society.
So, the abuse of children at Penn State?
A surprise?
When football rules that university, when the money
involved in the program and the advertising and all
the rest of it.
Protection of children?
In our schools, on our streets, in our homes?
Hardly.

0 Replies to “rich quatrone | what we do to children”

  1. why weaving the politico-military-industrialist rhetoric into what is obviously the behavior of a previously molested youth, who went on to pursue his perversions within the context of his own self established quasi-morality of “helping” those “poor” children who never knew what it was like for Sandusky.

  2. I don’t understand the previous comment, but I do understand your poem. And I appreciate it’s urgency, it’s righteousness, it’s miserable-ness…it’s sadness. Keep preaching, keep throwing grenades, throwing the barbs…it’s refreshing to see a poem every now and then that just says it straight and cuts to the bone, directly. Bravo.

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