POEM: The Burden of Success
The Burden of Success
The burden of success, you see, is not in work that’s done,
It’s in the final moments where victory is won.
The goals that we achieve,
To make us feel fulfilled,
Become nothing more than tiny hills,
On which our blood has spilled.
I found that these old peaks,
I worked so hard to climb,
Become nothing more than vantage points,
Of mountains more sublime.
These sights before my eyes,
Create a brand-new hole.
An emptiness inside,
That whisper,
“Look, a bigger goal!”
Some call it chasing happiness,
I call it a disease.
Of crossing over finish lines,
That turn to growing trees.
This burden is so heavy, way deep down in my soul.
The weight that this life carries creates a deep, dark hole.
I stand here in this house,
I built from my own stone.
Having more success,
Than this boy has ever known.
The man inside the monument feels thin as winter air,
A ghost who haunts the hallways of a life he can’t quite bare.
Each trophy is a placeholder, each battle that I’ve won,
Just builds a higher platform to see what isn’t done.
They come to me for water,
It is their right to drink.
They never have to wonder if I’m standing on the brink.
My wife and my children, are gravity and grace,
They need the sun to rise, they need me in my place.
The more that I pour, the deeper the well will go,
A sacred, endless duty that they don't ever need to know.
And the insidious thought arrives, a quiet, gentle guest,
To simply stop the engine, and let the whole thing rest.
To find the hidden door within the fabric of the day,
And fold myself to nothing, and simply fade away.
This burden is so heavy, way deep down in my soul.
The weight that this life carries, creates a deep, dark hole.
But then I see their sleeping faces, in the moon’s soft light,
And they become the anchor that holds me through the night.
To leave them with the burden of that silence I could choose,
Is the one and only battle that I know I cannot lose.
And how can this one small cup be full, this single spirit fed,
While justice sleeps and hungry souls go uncomforted?
My own small ache is nothing but a whisper in the storm,
Where other, better people can’t even keep their children warm.
So, I will stand my watch, and hold this heavy line,
And pray for strength inside this holy, tired shrine.
This burden is so heavy, way deep down in my soul.
The weight that this life carries, creates a deep, dark hole.
To give all that I have, yet still to go unseen,
To feel so very deeply, yet be stuck right in between.
A life I’ve built with boldness, of dreams that would come true,
Yet still to be surrounded in a world that's always blue.
It feeds upon the meek, the margins, and the weak,
On broken lives and shattered hopes where weary hearts creak.
The burden of success, you see, is not the work that’s done,
It’s in knowing that the victory is never really won.
