He rests encaged

his heart entangled as the Little Red Raven has done.

The school children shout, they jeer, and laugh, as they say:

Aye! It’s you who got pecked by the Little Red Raven

 

Branded upon this young lad is a sign to despise him.

Did he bear this at birth?

Or was he as those bullies might say - an unguided victim, a sodomite, a demon.

 

captured by the Little Red Raven he remains in his iron cage

a spectacle for all to take out your rage.

He fights back, he screams, he yells, he pleas, "just let me out I will do you no harm"

They laugh, they shout, they piss their holy water upon him, upon his wounded soul they let remain.

 

The church bells ring, dawn has come to bring the Little Red Raven another young soul 

The most pious of them all he was.

He danced, he sang, he loved and they loved him.

He bathed in their sacraments. Taunted his people's demons, yet one morn the Little Red Raven pointed his long glistening slender claw, as to say: 

Aye my son, now I must take you, be mine.

 

The music stopped, the dancing was done as he was placed in the center of his townspeople's square to rest encaged in the abyss of warmth

The abyss of warmth, the ninth circle of hell, and there he will remain until you my child set that poor lad free

To pull the latch on that Iron box,

to breathe life into his tattered soul, to show that lad how to sing, how to dance, and to take him to places flung far away from those brutish bastards.

 

It is your ignorant dimwitted soul that sanctifies this raven to something more than it is.

It is your bigotry that gives this delicate bird power.

Until you love there will be nothing but frost and ice as he shall forever remain sullen and sunken.

a soul that has remained beaten and battered is he, is he by no one but you, no one but you my son, you my daughter, you my friend.

No one but you.

 

For until you have seen, for until you have loved shall you utter a word, shall you present him with madness, shall you empower our red raven.

The beast that it has become is the beast that you are.

 

@boomerangpoesie