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I see people scowling and screaming
Raging and waging war on others,
Angry at each other or something else
But most of all angry at themselves.
They need to win a fight, any fight.
With whom, for what, it doesn’t matter,
It’s not about wrong or right,
It’s about the fight,
A way to take the anger out,
The anger that’s burning them inside,
The anger at nothing and everything.
I have been there myself at times,
And after you win the fight,
For a moment it feels like you can breathe again
It’s a good moment, you feel light
But in a little while, the anger returns
Deeper and spreading like a fire.
And the thing about fire,
You can’t throw it out the window
And on to the streets and get rid of it,
That only increases its reach.
To extinguish a fire one must remove
One of the three things that create it,
Heat, fuel, and air. The way I see it,
Pain is the match that creates the heat,
Our insecurities are fuel it feeds on
And our ego is the air that fans it.
I see people burning themselves,
And those they love, those around them,
Burning their houses and their cities,
While fighting fire with fire
And looking at the skies for a rain
Never realizing that the fire that starts within
Can only be extinguished from within.

-N

 

Photographer Unknown
Poetry © Copyright 2017, Niharika Jaiswal