This one is for the former radicals, the burned-out organizers, the people who can’t stop seeing both the violence of the system and their own fingerprints on its blueprints.
I truly believe this is the point we come to where reform from within, small changes aren't enough to push against the machine. Being the big cog doesn't fix it. It needs to break down and be rebuilt. This piece speaks so much truth.
Thank you, Nerra! Have been struggling to understand why rising figures always end up letting everyone down, especially in politics but in other domains too. This, and my limited experience in corporations survival, turned out in the poem.
I can only speak about a country I hold dear to my heart, America. The time for a revolution is now. Not from the left, not from the right but from the center outward. Independents account for 34% of the electorate. We need to join hands and be the big gear in the middle. The Common Sense party. Just 25% of the Democrats and Republicans each and we would be the middle 50%. I have been yelling this for almost two decades. Now is the time! No breakdown and no rebuild, realign like the wheels on a car. Just a slight change will make a huge difference.
Ed, I hope it can be done just as simple as rearranging the cogs to re-mechanize the system in a a different flow. We all hope, from not just within the US. 🙏 But looking at the way congress did nothing, nothing with all the crazy happening in the last year, I’m not so sure anyone will change a thing.
I have been a cog and I have been a boulder. I have been each many times in my life. I have also expected others to be boulders when they were only the cog.
There’s something ruthless and tender here that refuses to let you stand outside it and comment safely. It implicates you, then hands you the vocabulary to understand the implication and quietly shows you that even that vocabulary is not innocent.
That line “there is an erotics to erasure” doesn’t just provoke, it destabilizes. You don’t let the reader pretend they were only coerced; you insist on the seduction, the warmth of being chosen, even when the choosing is a narrowing. That honesty is difficult to look at, and you don’t soften it.
And then the turn: rock, obstruction, resistance only to discover that even resistance is legible to the system it resists. Not just legible, already anticipated. Even the language of revolt arrives pre-shaped. When you start crossing things out: overthrow / reform / dismantle / rebuild, corrupt / broken / illegitimate, even system / structure / framework and just / equitable / free, it feels like the poem refusing to let itself hide inside ready-made convictions. Those words aren’t wrong; they’re too fluent. Too available. You expose how quickly they harden into the very architecture they claim to escape.
The crossed-out pronouns—your / my—tighten that further. Ownership flickers, collapses, reassigns itself mid-breath. Responsibility won’t sit still long enough to be cleanly claimed.
What stays with me most is that you don’t resolve the paradox. You refuse the comfort of choosing between purity and complicity. “I hold both”and you mean it without theatrics. That restraint is what gives the ending its weight. The key, the door, the house, the country gone, and still carried.
It’s not just a poem about systems. It behaves like one: recursive, self-correcting, aware of its own failure modes.
Thank you, Dipti! I thought there is a cycle to being a part of systems, and it only comes down to where you are in the process to see it in a light or another, and want to be a part of it, change it or demolish it. Appreciate the reading and sitting in the middle for a while.
Yes, the cycle is unmistakable, but what you’ve done is refuse to let it feel like a clean rotation.
Because even “being in the middle” isn’t neutral, is it. It’s not a pause between positions, it’s a kind of pressure chamber where wanting to belong, wanting to change, and wanting to burn it all down start speaking in the same voice.
What stayed with me in your piece is that the phases don’t replace each other. They accumulate. The cog doesn’t disappear when the boulder arrives. The reformer doesn’t erase the destroyer. They stand, uncomfortably, in the same body.
So the question shifts, not where am I in the cycle, but how many versions of myself am I willing to recognize at once without simplifying them into a story that lets me rest.
“Sitting in the middle,” as you put it, feels less like rest and more like endurance.
And you don’t let it become anything softer than that.
Amazing as always. You just LOVE words don't you!... you play with meaning and context and produce beautifully clear ideas and images. I love reading your mind...
Clive! Thank you for reading this one! I wanted one that’s generic enough to explain systems, but can also explain why our favorite rising star politicians, once they enter the system, become one with the system and disappoint us. Sending hugs!
I truly believe this is the point we come to where reform from within, small changes aren't enough to push against the machine. Being the big cog doesn't fix it. It needs to break down and be rebuilt. This piece speaks so much truth.
Thank you, Mila!
"I am the cog who dreamed of being a boulder.
I am the boulder who became the cornerstone" That’s powerful Nicole. From cog to cornerstone… that’s a whole journey.
Thank you, Nerra! Have been struggling to understand why rising figures always end up letting everyone down, especially in politics but in other domains too. This, and my limited experience in corporations survival, turned out in the poem.
I can only speak about a country I hold dear to my heart, America. The time for a revolution is now. Not from the left, not from the right but from the center outward. Independents account for 34% of the electorate. We need to join hands and be the big gear in the middle. The Common Sense party. Just 25% of the Democrats and Republicans each and we would be the middle 50%. I have been yelling this for almost two decades. Now is the time! No breakdown and no rebuild, realign like the wheels on a car. Just a slight change will make a huge difference.
Ed, I hope it can be done just as simple as rearranging the cogs to re-mechanize the system in a a different flow. We all hope, from not just within the US. 🙏 But looking at the way congress did nothing, nothing with all the crazy happening in the last year, I’m not so sure anyone will change a thing.
I am a terminal optimist...
I have been a cog and I have been a boulder. I have been each many times in my life. I have also expected others to be boulders when they were only the cog.
Thank you, Sharon! I know that feeling, when people who could help you change wrong things prefer to keep their head down.
There’s something ruthless and tender here that refuses to let you stand outside it and comment safely. It implicates you, then hands you the vocabulary to understand the implication and quietly shows you that even that vocabulary is not innocent.
That line “there is an erotics to erasure” doesn’t just provoke, it destabilizes. You don’t let the reader pretend they were only coerced; you insist on the seduction, the warmth of being chosen, even when the choosing is a narrowing. That honesty is difficult to look at, and you don’t soften it.
And then the turn: rock, obstruction, resistance only to discover that even resistance is legible to the system it resists. Not just legible, already anticipated. Even the language of revolt arrives pre-shaped. When you start crossing things out: overthrow / reform / dismantle / rebuild, corrupt / broken / illegitimate, even system / structure / framework and just / equitable / free, it feels like the poem refusing to let itself hide inside ready-made convictions. Those words aren’t wrong; they’re too fluent. Too available. You expose how quickly they harden into the very architecture they claim to escape.
The crossed-out pronouns—your / my—tighten that further. Ownership flickers, collapses, reassigns itself mid-breath. Responsibility won’t sit still long enough to be cleanly claimed.
What stays with me most is that you don’t resolve the paradox. You refuse the comfort of choosing between purity and complicity. “I hold both”and you mean it without theatrics. That restraint is what gives the ending its weight. The key, the door, the house, the country gone, and still carried.
It’s not just a poem about systems. It behaves like one: recursive, self-correcting, aware of its own failure modes.
And you let it fail in the open.
Thank you, Dipti! I thought there is a cycle to being a part of systems, and it only comes down to where you are in the process to see it in a light or another, and want to be a part of it, change it or demolish it. Appreciate the reading and sitting in the middle for a while.
Yes, the cycle is unmistakable, but what you’ve done is refuse to let it feel like a clean rotation.
Because even “being in the middle” isn’t neutral, is it. It’s not a pause between positions, it’s a kind of pressure chamber where wanting to belong, wanting to change, and wanting to burn it all down start speaking in the same voice.
What stayed with me in your piece is that the phases don’t replace each other. They accumulate. The cog doesn’t disappear when the boulder arrives. The reformer doesn’t erase the destroyer. They stand, uncomfortably, in the same body.
So the question shifts, not where am I in the cycle, but how many versions of myself am I willing to recognize at once without simplifying them into a story that lets me rest.
“Sitting in the middle,” as you put it, feels less like rest and more like endurance.
And you don’t let it become anything softer than that.
I really 💙 your angry poetry!!! 😎✌️
Thank you! 🫂
Solidarity.
Amazing as always. You just LOVE words don't you!... you play with meaning and context and produce beautifully clear ideas and images. I love reading your mind...
Clive! Thank you for reading this one! I wanted one that’s generic enough to explain systems, but can also explain why our favorite rising star politicians, once they enter the system, become one with the system and disappoint us. Sending hugs!
This is such a powerful read !!!
I'm a former cog, too. Now I worry I'm a cog of resistance instead. If that makes sense.