A paper cut, a skinned knuckle, a toenail peeled back
to a pink headstone: what does the episodic unfurling of pain
have in common with death? Nothing, let’s say; I’d believed
the spectrum ran from fuse-blown axo-axonic ecstasy at one end
to eternal, claustrophobic darkness at the other
but it turns out oblivion marks its hatch dead-center, as though we
from the womb might painlessly emerge into merely
another amniotic suspension, afloat like a brain in a skull.
Lord, I’ve shaken my head and hurried under green awnings
during sun showers, I’ve clung to the gunwale and heaved seasickness
into the ocean, guts long since empty of bile. But watch this:
first I etch a hard-angled S into the iodine-yellow paint
of the bathroom stall, and then another, sideways,
and it’s a swastika. Or this: those first two sixes on the picnic table,
and the knife poised to curlicue another. If it doesn’t hurt,
tell me why I can make it last forever? Tell me what soul,
deprived completely the foolish runnels of its viscera
and nociceptors, wouldn’t yawn when hurt quakes and whimpers
to get away? We get stabbed with pitchforks around here,
lord, and there’s a lot more on the line than an imp’s job approval.
I could pick myself from between the devil’s teeth
and find a smile, I think, and maybe even grace in the steeling
to soldier on through those, your death camps, your gulags.
But here, when in desperate need I watch the stars as if
they were actually there and wish up at the heavens
for something to please offer solace against the worries and losses
of my loved ones, I’ve begun to wonder which deity
chose to divide bleeding from sadness, the harm from the harmed.
I’ve begun to wonder if I’m praying in the wrong direction.
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