I Speak of Pain

I speak of pain without external scars I speak of loss for treasured things I speak in the silence of my broken heart The me I hold against all that tears it apart. You think I am whole Because I nurture everyone to be More than moon and drinker of the harsh indifferent sun I teach them how to pull tides up Change seasons, set the dark alight Because wholesome deeds take not whole our strength Or should I better say this another way Pain is fuel in the fired clay I speak of pain deflating dreams and self I have pain for my brother and brethren gone Meteorites of my unlit dawn Nagging pebbles gnawing me in the shoe Pearls I could have spent brimming my manliness I speak of pain you cannot tell is there Every death is hard to bare But harder still my sibblings lost to me In a fatherless world, without compass to maturity. I speak of pain from ancient wars My sisters were richest part of life One place a whole cross on me, and I had to walk with it It is so I love amidst the ebb and flow of adversity I cannot wince, I am nailed to suffering's humility. I speak of pain a million ways to feel To dry a mother drenched in dreadful poverty While ever drowned in sorrows tears Amidst the frantic failures and fizzled repairs The family like a shattered glass, that special souvenir Becoming spites splints for bare susceptible feet There is no pain deep as these The magma boiling in the plugged up heart I speak of pain from cruel loss Friends fallowed into dry dead grass Ambition like candle fat ground into the carpet clammy with dust I speak of pain in love Yet only once I love, and still no love its loyalty denied When all the worldly value my peace could not abide I suffer still and but to silence confide The torture of my indomitable will, refusing death like a cup of gall I speak of pain, the whole legacy of Adam's wounding fall I make my rainbow with my tears And turn the volume of my prayers up To mute the scoffers, and the liars, and the jeers I drink my joy from a promised cup A wedding supper that challenges me with gender switching meanings And yet I am secure That nothing earthly may heal again my stagnant sore I speak of pain I feel From the hahazard day of grunting, groaning birth