Danger, Danger

iii.

The boy should have worn a label

like the ones on the sides of cigarette packs 

and on unstable drugs;

in tiny print that everyone ignores.

Instead he emobodied his label,

a warning that flaunted "danger, danger", 

and for once the world listened.

I think that's where the true problem started. 

He became a cautionary tale for children about to go out into the world:

"if you don't choose wisely, you'll end up like him".

And like all cautionary tales there is only one side of the story being told,

but the Heavens had him under lockdown;

thrashing him with sorrows,

and choking off his sanity with a grip that not even he could cut off;

so he was unable to defend himself.