ON PAIN (SORROW AND JOY)
What a word is hurt! Being so simple and naive
that captures not the burden of the heart
nor the shadow of reprieve.
Those who say hurt, are lucky indeed
for true pain they have never felt
or use of the empty word they’d cease.
Pain is a fleeting thing
to be held and embraced
for through these means we may validate
all that was been, has been, and will have been
For real is a fickle thing
as real is not real at all!
but that which we call truth by any other name
would still be the same, nothing but a justified explanation of white lies and green eyes,
And so, words are a thing
the thing we speak but not heed
that embodies nothing but hollow grief
like that life of love that bleeds
Which guides conscious conscience
of cautious countenance
serving the master’s matters in all
sensational sensibilities, that calls us forward
So, what a thing is love! A four-letter word
that knows not my soul’s eternal torture
like horrors spoke by maternal tongues
that cautioned their daring darling daughters and their simple sneaking sons
For it is cyclical as the sun!
blood rises to the east, bright and in heat
expels such passion, that warms the skin
and dries the mouths of women and men
till there is but an ounce of air remaining.
But that is confined by time
not itself but its children
not time constraint but time’s constraints
that command us to be wiser still
Mark not young bucks for their flesh be tender
gentle doe’s, innocent, guided to shelter
make not shreds of God’s plan when spring buds meet the elder man
but find harmonious ceremony in common union
marked by time’s convenient conversation
that prints permits for careful construction
The very construct that erects the walls
that deafen all who would hear me here
that would sharpen tongues of fellow prisoners
and revolt against the careless whisper
so that in the knock of the angel’s tune
comes Cupid’s arrow striking true
for it seems to me, the arrow of my heart
be the same arrow that leads me down, down, to the dark
Yet not for my bethroved beloved
engaged to the endless euphoria of Elysium
that has murdered and cast the blood
as I cradle that mortal coil with a hug
The devil says to me: she’s gone, she’s gone
and that, is not all that’s wrong
for a unkept promise made, is a lonely sunset yet
Her one and only wish, commanded
was to not be the only fish, abandoned
as the journey to sea below is harrowingly unsafe
that’s the thing she was, and so I stay in grief, bound by a web of chains,
So, what a word is hurt! So simple and naive,
That love, love’s the thing,
Love’s the thing that will always rhyme and ring,
And pain, so they say and sing
that’s the measure of the real thing
Yet tis not a thing, but a monster
A fire of the empire, The ashes of Rome
marked by the thankless mercy of Atilla
the scrounge of wintered Russia
Tis a beast that cannot be tamed nor slay,
saved by the monster himself
He, his own master, as I, the slave
Bound not by duty or honour, but bow in shame
For I dare not turn to be a coward
And yet to go forward is the same
Such is the truth of our tragic mortal coil,
a fragile fragment of sand
But this all comes down to but one thing in hand,
the very words we say in jestful happy
being nothing more than craving what is lost
to turn to our most gracious host
and thank them for the company
For I am hurt, by a heavy-handed heart
for I have loved, like the lone lantern in the dark
and there is but only one thing left that remains,
that which makes it wholly real: the everlasting pain.
