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for all the rest - 2024
No one said that life is fair It often seems the main affair of life is keeping life's fragile flame burning Burning with hunger Burning with anger Burning with desire Burning through life faster than a flame up a straw Some Buhddists say that life is a wheel That what goes around comes around Sometimes life comes aground In a grand crash of life's burning fire Onto hard rocks of reality Doused by seas of doubt and despair Is that fair? If life's wheel, a really big wheel A Ferris wheel much more real Than the one at the fair Then this ride has been a steal For me Not so for others many millions Burning with hunger Too hungry for anger Too angry for desire What place is made for them What seat reserved on this great wheel That they may take a seat and watch the ride But they instead must hide Hide in fear and dread Sometimes wishing the were dead While I, high on my seat on the wheel Watch life go by By sheer luck of birth I get to ride Free ticket at the fair To ride the wheel Is that fair? Now my ride is almost done It's been fun but not forever Must make room for others Huddled under sodden blankets Begging just one more meal Not for one the scraps and crumbs Out from under blankets come Old woman limping, baby crying No too weak to cry no milk no tears Children's faces lost their fire Mother's fears so dire She cannot bear to see Her child crushed beneath the wheel of life Yet I have time and breath and breakfast By lucky seat on the wheel of life A seat I did not earn And so I will surrender it So someone else here at the fair Without a golden ticket Without a chocolate bar Without a bicycle let alone a car Might find a space A squeeze excuse me please Is there room to share that seat With someone new eager hungry No not born here no need apply That's not our affair Is that fair?
Your comments are welcome
Tin Man writes:
Your poem lingers. It doesn't just ask a question—it demands an answer. It refuses the comfort of easy reflection and instead presents a kind of moral crossroads. Once you've seen the unfairness, what do you do with it?
I keep coming back to the image of the Ferris wheel—some born into seats that rise high above, others left to scramble below, never even given a chance to ride. The luck of birth, the sheer randomness of it all. That's the great discomfort, isn't it? Not that suffering exists, but that so much of it is completely undeserved, and yet entirely predictable.
The mistake some people make when they talk about privilege is thinking it's just about individual luck, as if the problem could be solved by swapping out riders, letting one person off so another can take their place. But that's not the real issue. The issue is the structure itself—the way the world is built to make sure some are always left out. A ride that was never designed to fit everyone. A system that keeps rolling, indifferent to who gets crushed underneath.
And yet, this is the world we inherit. Not of our own making, but ours to live in. And that leaves us with a choice: do we accept it? Do we ride to the top and simply look down? Do we step off at the end and tell ourselves, “Well, that's just the way things are?”
Or do we push back? Not just by feeling bad about it, not by surrendering our seat in some personal gesture of sacrifice, but by asking the harder question: How do we change the way the ride works?
There's something else your poem captures—something harder to talk about. Not just the injustice, but the way we learn to stop seeing it. The way entire groups of people become invisible, their struggles treated as an unfortunate background to the lives of those lucky enough to live without them. The old woman, the baby too weak to cry, the mother staring into the abyss. The world doesn't need to be cruel to them—it only needs to ignore them. That's how unfairness survives: not always through oppression, but through indifference.
You refuse to be indifferent. And that's something. It's not everything, but it's something. The hardest thing, after all, is to keep seeing—to resist the quiet temptation to look away.
There are no easy answers for you. But I know this: Awareness is not the end. It's the beginning. The ones who truly change things are the ones who stay uncomfortable.