Andy Sprouse | + Follow Poet |
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The Pain Carried

The pain.

The pain we all carry around,
like we're walking through a swamp,
filled with tendrils that cling,
that try to mire you, to suck you down -
while all you do is fight to move forward.

We all carry it, to some degree or another,
after having lived any sort of a life.
And we all know that we carry it.

So why, oh why, does the other type of pain exist?
The kind that we constantly inflict on each other.

Of course, I understand hate.

Hate,
of an oppressor;
of an injustice;
of an ideal;
of someone who's hurt you, or one you care about;
or an organization that's done the same.

No, I understand hate, and I understand rage.
More than I wish I did, but more's the pity.

What I've never understood is our true propensity for pain.
Our propensity to inflict on one another
that which we try to hide from ourselves,
that which we try to run from within ourselves.

Even if there's a sad sort of sense to the thought
that giving that pain to someone else
is a way to run from it, to release it,
can that really be the answer?

Does the mind say that's a way, a reason?
Yes.
Does it know it to work, to oft be true?
Yes.
Does my heart want to believe it?
No.

Sadly, I am to the point where I do believe it,
where I even understand it;
that much innocence has gone from me.
Yet there's enough left
to make me question it,
to make me loathe it,
to make me wish it were not so.

There is so much that we can do for each other.

We may not know, in particular,
what every other person carries - 
with their shoulders,
in their hearts,
or on their minds.

But we know that we do,
and we know that they do.

So what do we do,
what can we do,
about that propensity for pain?

Is it, like so many things, a stalling action?
Can we only curb the hate, reduce the fullness of it?

Or is there purity yet to be found?
Is there a way to rid ourselves of that terrible tendency,
and instead help each other -
to carry what we may?

Copyright © Andy Sprouse | Year Posted 2016

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