Yet another yesterday
contains the pain of
early today. I see the
spectrum between
pleasure and my former
storm, lightning and the
seared sand become glass
in the flash that was a moment
of denial/rage/pages of undescribed
feeling. The past manufactures pain,
the future checks the hinges for quality,
squeaklessness. Quiet pain can hold the
now in its cow mouth, cudding that chew,
mudding hooves while standing, sinking,
not a breath of thinking. Pain gains from
pleasure the obvious treasure: hurt and
grow rich, sink therefore I am. Death
taxes the mind except, ironically, in
the moment of itself. That's a great
example of pain's furtive future life.
Stubbed toe, cancer, appendixy stabs
of stomach possibility; each pain lives
a life of its town, growing to the edge
of its territory until the population
spills over into all the other draft
horses, driving the herd out into
the open, wetting the plain with
the saltwater of the eyes, guaranteeing
that this land will be Carthage after
the Romans were done with their
revenge. Pain is an elephant. Don't
think of the elephant. You are.
Enter the parts of the elephant.
You legs, you feet, you trunk,
you giant eyes -- feel your pieces
and know that they can fit together
without the fraying hedges that
pretended to divide your saline
components from your watery
oceanic depths, yet uncharted.
Roman Ryan 