‘Why Beanstalks Seek the Sun’: About Suicide: Words of Life, Hope and Courage.

Why? Why is there is a sense of hopelessness that we who care, often feel very deeply and intensely at the loss of a child. It is an extremely powerful emotion that undermines all others, more so when we have lost that loved one to suicide. As parents, we can often unwittingly be blind to many of the deeply emotional struggles that our children can and often experience, especially during that period when great hormonal and physical changes are taking place. Generally, we kind of expect our kids to approach their teen years, in a similar manner to how we did. Perhaps that would apply perfectly if the world, its technology and opportunities, didn’t change from one generation to another.

Effectively, it doesn’t take very much to create gapping differences, although in fairness, that is also something that makes having children a wonderful event. Most parents want their children to do better and have more life options than were available to them. Today’s generation certainly do in some respects have greater opportunities and yet in other respects, are exposed to risks that their parents never were. In an online generation there are often perils that offline parents are maybe completely unaware of, especially given the width and depth of social and unsocial networking, which precludes parental involvement.

So what of loss? The loss of our young to suicide is a truly sad and cruel scourge that has no boundaries in regard to age, race, religion or sex. Suicide is becoming a more prevalent problem than most societies are prepared to own up to. There tends to be an extremely negative social stigma attached to suicide, which serves to downplay the existence and ongoing effects of youth suicide, while ensuring that proactive efforts to address the problem openly and honestly are undermined. Youth suicide is not a taboo and should not be promoted as such; it is an unnecessary loss of young lives, an unnecessary event that is killing our children!

'Why Beanstalks Seek The Sun' by Pearldiver, is a prose poem about youth suicide and what it is to be a parent who has lost a large part of that parent's life. This article is not written as a result of the author losing a child personally to youth suicide, rather it is written as a result of the deep understanding that the author has for all parents who have suffered from this cruel and often silenced waste of beauty and talent. Tell the world what the world has lost and perhaps it will care, as we do.

* Rob - Pearldiver *

Copyright © 2011 Pearldiver Poetry with all rights reserved

You changed in ways unseen

I remember your fears

How you hated heights

Wouldn’t swing high in the park

You never trusted the swing

Or that I wouldn’t let you fall

I would never let that happen

You grew up to be so fine

Yet unsure and slightly awkward

I put that down to, the nature of the seed

A bean seeking the sun, growing tall

How I looked forward to times together

I never knew how others treated you

Or how cruel were those who bullied

Online there on a page, a crime

Why? Why do they cull the best?

Why do they act like movie wolves?

Why did I never ask if you were okay?

And why, I never guessed?

I never saw the pain behind soft eyes

Only a futile gentle demeanor of childhood

Holding onto final hours before

A dawning of your metamorphosis

Your growth, your wonderful destiny

Why, why did I never see?

How much you needed certainty

How much you feared the unknown

How to fix the broken pieces

How to reach a shattered soul

How to hold you, forever hold you

Just so you would know

I always believed I knew you

And I understood your heart

Your quite ways of seeming to be

I never could have seen

Any of the signs that they say

Gives us warning, WARNING

Gives us time, time to stop

To fix the broken pieces

Before they hit the ground

Before they shatter beyond repair

Warning, warning, Why!

There was no damn warning!

And you swung high without fear

And here you hang lifelessly

Now silent, my silent dear

I can not fix the broken pieces

I could not see your pain

Why, why, WHY?

No warning, no signs, Why!

Broken pieces of you now

Embedded within my heart

Broken silence echoing

Shock reverberating damn whys

And here you hang lifelessly

Limp peacefulness in your face

Escapee of the reality of your pain

Yet now you are broken, like my heart

Why? Why could you not say?

I would have taken away the sadness

Helped you grow closer to the sun

Saved our world from this waste

In this crime of fear there is no beauty

No perpetrators caught by remorse

Just we, the preferred victims

Broken, we each in someway broken

By so many disjointed dots of why

Look at the braveness of your fate

Yes you have swung high above your fear

With certainty and purpose

You faced the darkness alone

Weighed down with secret burden

And here you hang lifeless

Now silent, my silent dear

In silence I cut down my child

Silence echoes. Why? Why?

Among the unsaid words

A flood of emotions mixed

Silence cut down this child’s innocence

So our broken pieces shatter more

Limp peacefulness in your face

I close the curtains of your bulging eyes

And I hope you fly with angels

And I hold you to my heart in lateness

And remember you never trusted

That I wouldn’t let you fall

Why do you lay here, my broken lad?

When I close my eyes in every tomorrow

I will see empty fields surrounding me

The barren miles waiting for me to plow

Since you left us here, in broken silence

Lost to the erosion and decay of why

The only rain to bless our broken beans

Falls endlessly from shattered tears now

oo0oo

* Poetry by Pearldiver *

Copyright © 2011 Pearldiver Poetry with all rights reserved

'Are You Really Okay?'

Too many look away in shame

Try to cover up in silence, what should be said

They refuse to recognize it’s something more

Than just some crazy mixed up kid

Yet we ignore the failure buried in such apathy

Most no longer know how to stop their fall

Don’t see the dangers in unsocial networks

In fact, it’s probably fair to say

That many kids aren’t known at all

So help them work through their fears, their pain

Ask them everyday, “Are you really okay?”

And let them know how loved they are and why

Build their confidence and self esteem

Help them build on their strengths each day

Give them reasons to endure and achieve

And when they fear the things sent to test them

Show them that you had to face those fears too

They taught you how to believe in life, believe in you

Believe in butterflies and angels, in being true

Teach them to believe there is no failure

In anything they try to do

Beanstalks will always reach for the greatest light

Why? There is no natural need to search darkness

If you plant them in a position to always see their sun.

oo0oo

* Poetry by Pearldiver *

Copyright © 2011 Pearldiver Poetry with all rights reserved