(No subject)

[Guest guest]

OK, so some of you may just say that I am having another one of

" those days. " Well, I hope that as you read this that you will sense

even more my despair and I know that I am opening myself up here a

bit more rawly than usual. This really is my life and there are so

many more who live the same. Try to take care of them as best as you

can. As Prine sings, " Just say 'Hello, in there. Hello.' "

The difference: Pain & Sorrow

Pain occurs at the prick of a pin

it happens as quickly as it subsides

A picture on the front page news

of a dead Iraqi baby

killed by an American round

Pain is so quick and passes just the same way

The picture will disappear by lunchtime

Another blond joke will take its place

I hear the guffaws now

over the wine and the cheese.

Pain occurs at the cut of a knife

Blood passes, sometimes endlessly,

Until the pain subsides forever

Or until a compress is placed and

The blood stops flowing

The thought of it will be gone by suppertime

Replaced by talk about

the activities of the day

The news is then turned way down

so that it can't be heard

or simply turned off

so that it can be completely ignored.

Pain occurs with

the breaking of a leg

or a mini-massacre

of bruises from a fall down the stairs.

People will sign your cast and ask for the story

the story will repeat itself

and become more and more emboldened

more and more elaborate and filled with

with more and more detail.

While the bruises will raise internal questions

about possible abuse

that will just as quickly be swished away

like the buzzing flies.

Yet this story too,

like the broken leg,

will have its own repeated story

and embellishments,

only,

this time,

no signatures . . .

By dinnertime, it will just be another part

of the menagerie of life

and, this story, too,

like the many others,

may well repeat itself many times in one's life

as if, somehow, it has greater meaning

or some sense of prophecy

or even provide something innovative

in an otherwise monotonous existence.

Ah, but you ask about sorrow,

I see, for you feel

it has been neglected.

I have not done so at all

for sorrow is neglected.

As usual,

it is a lonely sort of thing.

No one comes to visit it.

No one signs the cast

that it places over its victims.

No one tells its story again and again

for it is not one that is to be repeated.

It is unfathomable to those

who keep the pictures in their minds

that never go away.

It is only reachable by the hopeless few.

As it is not shared and it is ignored;

it is suffered silently.

The tears are only shed

alone in the darkness

or alone in the day

when one KNOWS

that no one is coming

(which is usually all of the time).

Sorrow is not a face

or even a physical thing.

It is just what it is.

Anyse