I sleep generous hours
yet I am still exhausted
this is breakdown
I eat nourishingly well
yet I am still hungry
this is breakdown
I snarl and growl fiercely
yet I am still enraged
this is breakdown
I sob deeply
prone upon the earth
yet still I am not comforted
this is breakdown
I am going through The Change
what was no longer is
a shell I didn’t know I wear
is cracking
unknown parts of me are showing
tender, sore and frightened
I’m turning to mush
It’s not just me
The Earth also wearies and sobs
her People rage and hunger
Another afflicted youth
machine guns children at school
we change nothing
this is breakdown
Another politician
lies to our doubting eyes
we shrug
this is breakdown
Another uniform
murders a young Black son in our streets
we change the channel
this is breakdown
Another billionaire
robs us blind and deaf of trust and voice
we sigh in our armchairs
this is breakdown
We are going through The Change
what was no longer is
we are cracking
truthful parts of us are showing
we are not who we say we are
we’re turning to mush
I do not need more fire
I need water and spacious air
The world does not need more air
it needs floods and firestorms
Oh tell me how to have patience and faith,
how to set this immoral apathy
ablaze?
Oh tell me this strange affliction
this stifling restriction
is a chrysalis
and not a shroud
© S. Rinderle, 2/4/15
Published in Malpais Review, Summer 2015
Purple Lyrics 
You must share the secret of patience once you find it. Very powerful feelings and descriptive words, indeed!
Ha! Thank you Mona! Patience is not my strong suit, but trying to just ride the unpredictability of life (which increases with age) and be present with the Now seems to help! 🙂
Good suggestion, Susana! 🙂 I hear you on the patience factor. I feel I am one of *the* most impatient people in the world where I want things to flow in my direction when I want them to flow. I get caught up in my own storm very often when I see that’s not the case. Sometimes we do get some surprisingly unexpected events which then easily gets us excited, and then life throws us some obstacles trying to test what the universe is trying to lead us.
Oh, this may be your best. I need to wait for the tears and chills of recognition in me to die down… What a beautiful recognition that our microcosm is the microcosm. How beautifully you have captured the complex tension. The last stanza is the most profound thing I’ve read in quite a whole…
Wow, thanks Nancy! That kind of feedback really means a lot, especially coming from you. It’s strange, I hadn’t written anything in weeks, then this poem started speaking in my head on the way to a coffee date. I’m learning to stop and listen when the Universe speaks.
Profound, and moving. friend.
……my own experience has been that whether it is “chrysalis or shroud” is ultimately in our own power…I THINK!…although the ability to act on this can take quite awhile.
H
>
Indeed! Thank you Friend. When it comes to the question for us, I mostly agree, but when it comes to the state of the world, I fear this is not within my power, try though I might. 🙂
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