Tenterhook: a hook used to fasten cloth on a drying frame or tenter.

The Rack

The whole world stretched on tenterhooks, suspense our daily bread.
We hardly know how we should feel until the news is read.
No gentle folds around us to cushion out our dread.
What country now in warfare? What new group fallen dead?
The sadness of the whole taut world unravels in our head.
The fabric of society loosening thread by thread.
Billionaires grow fatter as children go unfed
when politics and Wall Street are so smugly wed.
Like bleating sheep we follow. We are so easily led.
What was meant to swathe us  hooks us on the rack instead.

The prompt today is tenterhooks.