Paradise, Fool || Poetry

In the Lack of Other Altetnatives, I Cradle My Rage

19 October, 2022
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I cradle an enormous rage in me
Like a parent pacifying a tantrum-throwing child:
Hush
Not now
People are looking
I'll give in to you later, okay, when we get home.
But where is that home and when shall we reach there?
My rage wants to sit in the middle of the road
And stop moving vehicles with her bare hands
(How dare they go about in their long drives when everything outside the window is burning?)
My rage wants to uproot iron gates
And raze entire skyscrapers to the ground
(How dare they party all night when everything outside the window is burning?)
Is that silly? Like the tantrum-throwing child
My rage is silly.
Powerless in front of bigger hands and taller heads.
On most days I have to hug it close
Say: no, rage, no yet.
Someday you will get to shout
To let out the lung shattering howl rotting in the silence of your throat
And everything will shatter like they were meant to from the very beginning.
Someday you will get to be free
To name names and declare that you don't want to smile anymore
Goddamnit, my rage doesn't want to smile anymore!
She knows what he and he and he have done
And my rage would rather fight than ignore and unsee
But my rage is a child
Dreaming of growing up and breaking free of her parents' leash
But who will tell her that the leash just gets passed on from one hand to another?
So I protect my rage with sweets and chips.
Smother her to sleep with lullabies and whispers of:
Hush
Not now
People are looking
I'll give in to you later, okay, when we get home.

But where is that home and when shall we reach there?
(There is no home and we shall never reach there.)

And what will become of my rage by then?