When I Try To Cry

There are times when a man like me Wants to cry like a child But for the barren pits of tears and Crumbling pebbles of bones Wetting my eyes becomes no lesser task Than kneading gravels to bake a bread I've evolved from flesh to stone A walking statue weathered by life What more could I do for the little girl Who looks for food in a heap of garbage While a skeletal dog barks at her with Sound of saw on a fallen tree They declared my blood has sugar in excess Why then my heart is bitter I wonder When I see a dead child Wheeled away to the morgue Why can't I feel the pain even as I hear A baby's cry from the maternity ward Loneliness swallows me tonight I bend my limbs on the bed Like a fetus in a womb and I hear a faraway voice Hushing me through a severed umbilical cord and I feel the warmth of familiar hands on my cheeks And my eyelids begin to burn in gentle flames When I try to cry