Arena of Despair

Mike Essig
thewrytr.
Published in
1 min readJun 26, 2017
John Liberto

Overexposure can exhaust empathy.
Too many damned sorry tsunamis
and the heart wants to retreat
to a lawn chair with a beer and
lose itself binge watching TV.
This is not a moral failure
(except for the binge watching).

War, death, poverty, refugees, etc.,
drain the soul’s savings account.
Modern misery takes no breaks.
Sometimes it is just too much.
You begin to experience numbness.
Something inside you says enough.

When finally your fund of feelings
has managed to replenish itself,
you return to the arena of despair,
to take on the searing pain of others,
still very glad you aren’t there.

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Mike Essig
thewrytr.

Honorary Schizophrenic. Recent refugee. Displaced person. Old white male. Confidant of cassowaries.