We live in a broken carousel,
in the middle of a
long time empty festival.
The old wooden horses
go up and down
on and on,
and everything spins
once more,
and once again,
while the horses slowly
lose their paint.
Every so long,
a carpenter comes
and replaces a horse
with a new and shiny
little pony,
who learns to go
up and down,
revolving around,
from the old and worn
other horses.
And so the carousel
can go on spinning,
young little ponies turn into
old worn horses
that wait to be replaced.
But never, in this
ancient cycle,
not a single time
has the central column
that everything revolves around
been replaced, or even
examined by anybody.
And if someone did look at it,
they would see that
no single horse has ever
been more worn than
this column, center of all.
No, no one has,
and so the carousel
goes on spinning
without clients
or even tickets.
Apr 2
Apr 2, 2026 at 5:43 AM UTC
We live in a broken carousel,
in the middle of a
long time empty festival.
The old wooden horses
go up and down
on and on,
and everything spins
once more,
and once again,
while the horses slowly
lose their paint.
Every so long,
a carpenter comes
and replaces a horse
with a new and shiny
little pony,
who learns to go
up and down,
revolving around,
from the old and worn
other horses.
And so the carousel
can go on spinning,
young little ponies turn into
old worn horses
that wait to be replaced.
But never, in this
ancient cycle,
not a single time
has the central column
that everything revolves around
been replaced, or even
examined by anybody.
And if someone did look at it,
they would see that
no single horse has ever
been more worn than
this column, center of all.
No, no one has,
and so the carousel
goes on spinning
without clients
or even tickets.
Capitalism? Education? Health (in some places)? Our society's systems for a lot of things are simply broken, yet the powerful don't change them.
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Copyright: Shattentraumer, 2026. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Original: https://hellopoetry.com/poems/5284116/a-broken-carousel
