LIFE (scene two)

LIFE

can seem insane.
So many of us are unable
to withstand its pain.
We do our best to live,
to contribute
to a world
constantly changing
and maddening.

Still, through it all
some of us manage not to fall.
Like a seedling
making its way up through concrete,
we spread our wings,
we plant our feet.
We’ve found our place;
we are lauded and celebrated.

But then-
in the blink of an eye,
an “apparent suicide“.

What happened?!
What went wrong?!
Does not success
bring with it sustained happiness?
What of us
for whom no one makes a fuss,
who daily squeeze into an overcrowded bus
to a job that leaves us empty and numb?
If the “extra-ordinary” so regularly succumb,
how then does the “ordinary” overcome?

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Change to Save

I will need to change my life
in order to save it.

This I am feeling to my very core.
Don’t know  how much more
I can swallow.
I’m walkin’ on thin ice,
on troubled waters that are shallow.

Born an introvert, Quiet is the air I must breathe,
what sustains and maintains me.
Without adequate doses of silence,
I lose pieces,
become untethered,
cannot see a hopeful reality,
begin to question my existence
and that of all humanity.

Why all the noise –
the incessant chatter and mindless banter?

Y’all gonna make me lose my mind
up in here, up in here.
Y’all gonna make me lose control
up in here, up in here.”

I will need to change my life
in order to save it.

Deprived of silence,
I feel my blood boiling,
heart racing,
hands tremblin’,
mind slipping.
I can taste that bitter, flimsy line
between love and hate;
that soft, raw space
where even the gentlest among us
can suddenly snap
and do things we can never take back.
The Devil isn’t over there-
No, it plays in us all
bidding we follow
and fall-
fall so hard and low,
we can barely stand up.

I will need to change my life,
re-claim it
in order to save it.

Exactly how to do so
overwhelms and scares –
the tide is seemingly so high.
Got to go deep inside,
to The Core
lean only on that which is Truth and pure.