Boys for Sale (What truly grown-up men discuss)

What is to be done?  Who is to do it?

©2014 by Alice Walker

My friend says to me:
But what can we do?  Already giving up.
To be aware is already something,
I say.  Consciousness rarely
leaves us unmoved. Or unmoving.
And so it is with this revelation
of what has been happening
to our children, all of them,
and especially to our boys.
The beast in so-called
civilized man
is more lethal, sinister,
grotesque and cunning
than I would have believed:

And what is it, anyhow, this beast?
How does it manifest
in every age
to  plague our republic
from shadows
it projects
as light?

We are presented here
with four men who may, in their
simplicity, signal
a beginning of the end of our acute
obliviousness:

Four men sitting on metal folding chairs
talking together, almost  forty years ago;
saying what they have witnessed,
what they have surmised,
what they have feared;
hearing each other out.  Taping
themselves.  Sharing this, all these years later,
with us, who thought we had heard it all.

This is what I believe truly grown-up men
should do.  Feel deeply.  Be present
to the steeply  challenged life of the  young.  Care about  children,
whether boys or girls, and not only about your own.

Sit together, as these
men do:
become determined
to liberate us
from our fantasy
of a society that cares:

Be resolved as Buddhas
to find a way through.

To sit a lifetime
if need be
on hard chairs.

Youtube Source: Video Boys for Sale 1 of 2, Video Boys for Sale 2 0f 2

Youtube Source as of August 2015: Documentary Boys for Sale