Slice and dice
summer like a cook
my eyes are poor company
but you my ache
understood the blade
dancing naked to know
the nature of lives
Poems on the topic: pain
Poems on the topic “pain” on Poets.by.
Painstaking
where are my great pains
to defend me against my will
if the new ship is called Luck
am I her on-shore rat
Betterment
if I could put back
in the box all
my dark rain
and play a poet
of insipid ruins
would I live
only on the road
and stop being hurt
Only world
will a first kiss
dull the discourse
how is an only world
so little
tell me to build again
and borrow some pain
Crowd control
in days of sickness
a great crowd comes
to the wrong world
from pain
comes alone
like some hoped-for good luck
and I am silent as the moonlight
entering my bed
Martyrdom
digging like a father
for his son
I find my notes
for the subcommittee on pain
all the old accounts of a heart
clear as windows in a church
and the doors burned
and the roof falling down
Prisoner of conscience
a faction of one
in my cell believes
in doubt like a castle
with no king
to wanton away his time
in volumes of pain
Night bird
another hope sinking
into my night bag
every call is strange
that we hear in the dark
another body in pain
over another body
throats that never were people
cry higher
birch and oak burn
and fly at last
Maquiladoras
bled to make shoes
to make clothes
which they did with good will
and great pain
who could not say Let us see
what we can do to mend all
as a fur of experience
rose over us like amber
Omission
no news is plague news
shutting up infected people
and nobody imagining their pain
no news is like meeting an angel
more than air
more than some poor child
and dying daily of sadness
at my heart having nothing
Autopoetics
I suffer auspiciously as a rose
from unfinished pain
having made myself captain
I know who he is
but you see a man
dead of ordinary melancholy
Sadomasochist’s lament
pleasure is a spent country
having laws but no art
like pain
which the poor have perfected
and now refuse out of hand
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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