I grew up amongst the tribe of fatherless sons,
We are the true lost ones.
Finding thugs, killers and dope dealers
As role models for our future.
Our mothers strove from 8 to 5,
Tryin’ to keep hope alive
That our rebellion was just a phase,
One to pass in the coming of days,
But oh, how we were lost in our ways.
See, we longed for more than a mother’s love,
We looked tirelessly for a masculine image to clone.
Told to be ‘the man’ of the home,
But lost upon us, like gold’s shine covered in dust,
Was the meaning of being a ‘man’.
Our fathers were like gardeners
Who plant a seed as it were
And never came back to nurture,
Letting it spring up amongst weeds and insects
That on its innocence feed.
It’s not only that we have been forgotten,
We have been forsaken
By supposed men, of which we’re the next of kin.
So, I call out you cowardice swine,
Who left behind in your lustful wake,
Hearts and lives you thought not twice to break.
How do you answer for your crimes?
Does the anguish caused by you
Play upon your conscious mind?
For those of us who did not succumb,
To all that we had to overcome,
And even those still lost,
May our tribe die with us,
For a future without fatherless sons is a must!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Reggie West is serving life without the possibility of parole.  He can be reached at:
Reggie West #FE-6643
1000 Follies Road
Dallas, PA 18612

Doom and despair, agony and loneliness,
they were my days and my companions for years.
Rage consumed my soul.

My mind screamed for a way to be heard,
long days locked in a box.
The stigma of a convicted murder.

The case false, but conviction so true,
no one cared what I had to say.
The courts turned a cold shoulder.

I almost fell into the void of no return,
hope a word or just a thought?
No, it’s a way of life for me.

Walk in those shoes… who, what, where?
All light at the end of that dark tunnel.
My life started to change.

You gave me a voice to be heard,
I have a voice again.
People are listening now.

I am a person again, with a story to be told,
I write and cast off the clouds of darkness.
I am alive again, through my published words.

To write heals my soul,
patches my torn spirit.
Justice may again be within my grasp.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Reggie West is serving life without the possibility of parole.  He can be reached at:
Reggie West #FE-6643
1000 Follies Road
Dallas, PA 18612