Compassion Fatigue

Sadness pales in the face of a planet's suffering with desperation.

Yes…

That ache behind the eyes

Only grows for news is no longer new.

Such pain gradually impacts

Our mind and heart

Where the weight

Is not measured in pounds or kilograms,

But in unmeasurable density of sorrow,

Adding to the wounds on a body and soul

Already heavily bruised.

Gaza’s population is turning into stick people animation,

The children’s ribs becoming the shriveling lines we read between.

Africa’s famine stretches across decades,

A silence that is only heard by impoverished-heavy air

A vibration of flat-line suffering.

Mothers with the wail of loss in schools turned mausoleums,

While chaos and bullets continue to form the legacy of the future.

Drinking water remains an evaporative disappearance

Not just in rivers and streams,

But in parched hope.

Medicine trickles into third-world veins

As mercy is rationed by spreadsheets.

Endangered species vanish,

Not with a roar or a screech on high,

But with a poacher’s receipt.

The disabled in America lose Medicaid care

With the stroke of a magic marker,

As if dignity were a luxury.

Government workers and researchers

Find themselves dismissed without cause,

Their careers and livelihoods folded

Into the shadows of bureaucratic power mongering.

Epstein’s victims may wait forever,

As justice is whispered in four letter words

In hide-away rooms like children’s tree houses of secrets.

While…

Just down the street

Soup lines grow in this land of abundance,

As our food costs rise more than shame.

And we…

Scroll,

Sigh,

Donate,

Cry,

Burnout.

Yes…

Compassion, once a flame,

Now flickers dangerously in air becoming heavier and heavier,

Not as if we didn’t care,

But because many of us care too much,

Too often,

Infiltrating out nocturnal dreams,

With too little change.

Are we tired, not of feeling, but of feeling without healing?

Are we to live with open wounds

Until we finally capitulate

And pass on?