So it was for them,
and for countless others,
as they grew and struggled
in a soulless-system, seeking-out
their identities, their paths, their purpose,
their successes, as captivating circumstance
cajoled (each of them) with a fool’s panacea.
People much like cold calderas, once bold
and forceful, now sadly subject to the
chronicles of yawning indifference.
.
A battered cop’s wife
beat down and oppressed,
seeks retribution in her world
of make-believe. A sister’s alcoholic
husband beats on her regularly;
it rewires her heart and mind.
Cursed by his choices,
he is sadly killed
in a head-on
collision,
leaving her and an
only son alone and unloved.
.
Years go by…
.
Ever deprived of model,
the son loses his bearings, angry,
arrogant, aggravated, he curls inward,
embraces his wounds, weed, alcohol, pills,
ends up wayward, darkened, lessened, a miscreant
seeking refuge in a Wiccan’s ramshackle garage,
where he drinks and smokes himself numb
and lines the framing with hundreds
of empty bottles he pretends
are medals….
.
These accounts
proliferate like weeds,
in every city and township
the wounded (financially solvent
or in straitened circumstances) exist in
an odd state of melancholic un-belonging,
souls seeking freedom, wings, peace,
meaning, as opposing forces
relentlessly push back
with impudent vigor,
ugly converting
influences,
staunch
unbending
unwavering
deceptive assuredness
vomiting multiple sides of
similar theories while being simultaneously
caught betwixt shadows of indifference
as side by side miseries annihilate
meaningful purpose…
.
And they persist
like wildflowers and weeds,
a pandemic of fraught souls
struggling,
surviving alone,
unloved in a soulless system,
scorned, segregated, separated
alone dreamers dreaming dreams
of beautiful things that remain
[for them] unrealized …
.
© Richard Lloyd Cederberg
6/2026
                           A NEW RACE OF HuMANS