#broken world

it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.

-- Mary Oliver

The world is a graveyard of things we once named holy,

Where the pulse of the earth is a drumbeat of "me."

I look at the horizon and see only the hunger,

A tide of gray shadows on a salt-poisoned sea.

I hate the shape of us, the cruel, upright posture,

The mouths that speak peace while the hands sharpen steel.

There is a rot in the marrow of every interaction,

A numbness so deep that we’ve forgotten how to feel.

Humanity just hurts each other for the sport of the sting,

Finding the soft spot to drive in the blade.

We are architects of misery, builders of ruins,

Profiting off the very terrors we’ve made.

There is no love left, only the transaction,

A balance sheet written in selfishness and spite.

We trade in the currency of another man’s weeping,

And call it our triumph, and call it our right.

We walk through the streets like ghosts made of flint,

Striking sparks off each other just to watch the fire grow.

People don’t care for the heartbeat beside them,

Only for the power of the "yes" or the "no."

There is nothing but disrespect in the air that we breathe,

A coldness that settles like ash on the tongue.

No compassion survives in this landscape of ego,

Where the anthem of "I" is the only song sung.

I hate the hollow promise of the "brotherhood" of man,

The way we mask our venom with a thin, plastic grin.

We are a species of predators wearing silk and fine linen,

Hiding the claws that are tucked underneath the skin.

The well has run dry; the milk has turned sour,

And the "soul" is a relic that we’ve traded for stone.

I want no part of the crowd or the clamor

In a world built on hatred, I’d rather be alone.

#stonewalls

But now there is an immense uncertainty,

That flows through me,

Making me question my ability,

To pursue further my journey in this life,

For all that I feel has caused so much doubt,

As I continue to lose my notion,

Of what I was truly meant for...

©️fallencalliope

Broken cities.

Burning bodies.

Maggots in the rotten corpses.

Corrupt politicians

bleeding their people dry.

Eye for an eye—

wars make us blind.

Losing trees for greed,

we can’t breathe.

Mental health cases on the rise—

it hurts so much

they want to die.

Money spent on the wrong things.

The rich get richer,

the poor sleep on the streets.

Give me another reason

why we should breed.

And the cycle repeats,

endlessly.

With history, we’re damned to repeat

until we finally cross the line.

But maybe—

We do not keep perfect silence in our borrowed bed.

We suppress the moans, but not the whispers.

Our proximity did not allow them to escape from the room, as if the gravity of our bodies kept them orbiting around it, inaudible to the rest of the cosmos.

A black hole but formed by words of love of infinite density.

We live naked in our secret while the planet burns, searching in this shared now for the impossible certainty of tomorrow.

And I feel guilty for being happy among the pieces of a broken world.