The Lad Poem by Prabal Dahal

Look!
There goes the boy...
You might've met him before;
He was a brilliant lad,
People liked to call him gifted.

Alas! I hear he's now doing drugs,
He listens to the voices in his head,
Or that is just what he says.

His eyes are red and moist,
He has no hope,
He suffers fatal illness,
He has nowhere to go.

There was once a time,
Where he harbored his ambitions.
He dreamt he was an angel,
Sent to help the mankind.

I saw him the other day,
Sleeping near the gutter;
He was there all alone,
Hungry, Shivering and in awe.

His eyes so innocent,
As though it belonged to a child;
His torso so fragile,
Seemed it could break at any point.

I do not know how a prodigy
Became a lost soul.
I can, however, tell you,
What might have happened,
To cause this fatal scenario.

He lived a couple of blocks away from me;
He was a jolly fellow.
He found happiness in everything he did;
He laughed and joked,
As though there was no tomorrow.

One day he found a passion,
To help others in need.
His fellows called him crazy
Because he became completely selfless.

He was warned there is no good;
No good in sacrificing all he had.
He was told a day would come;
A day while he became a stray dog.

He was optimistic,
But knew no laws to prove his fellows wrong;
Little did he know that he was wronged,
Wronged to have thought the world to be so true.

They took away all the warmth he could offer,
But never thought good of him;
They were vicious and wild,
Not less degrading than cannibals.

The poor school boy,
Oblivious of what was coming to his path;
Gave away everything he had.
It was certainly very sad,
He was now really mad;
The world he dreamt of was not what he got
The world he lived in made him a rusty mutt.