Learning To Cope: Hybrid Poem
Prompt response: pictures of pain
i start to read and my mind turns to mush — there is no space left for thoughts to enter nor words to swarm — once the pain settles in there is room for nothing more.
so i dissociate from it
abandon my wanting
of anything
except
less of this
to keep my head above
while the body sinks
drowning
in neurons that
suction me
to the depths of hell
where the puppet master
controls the strings
my spine — its evil-doing domain
yanking and pulling in opposite ways
a maniacal laughter shrouded in throbbing waves
crashing vertebrae-into-ever-loving-vertebrae
knotting muscles that wrangle for oxygen with nerves
shooting messages of flight back to the brain
how can the body shame me like this?
let me down
like this?
abandon me
like this?
PAIN
is forever
so very
isolating
compelling me to hide
never letting the herd know
i’ve fallen behind
— no matter
i refuse to name it — refuse to know myself with the likes of it — like pus forming around a wound — the words disappear and the self goes immune — i’m merely a body like an insect shedding skin — stepping away till it’s safe enough to settle back in— for once burrowed — the pathway remains where larvae will find another route of rage.
— so instead
i imagine floating in a supine release — as if my breaths were to paint the sky in a cirrostratus design — undulating the idle chatter surrounding me and the antagonizing thoughts inside — as the ears submerge and the water cushions me from behind — like a baby born again…
inhaling — i’m alive — exhaling — i‘m alive — even when I can no longer recognize the youthful athlete that got stuck inside.
-Breathe & Be Still ©2022
I have intentionally avoided J.D. Harms’ prompts on pain and there’s still a lot of avoidance in this write. I keep hearing J.D. in the back of my mind telling me to flesh “this” out more — to give my audience “something more to chew on” but I can’t or I simply won’t. Perhaps that’s how I cope after a decade of dealing with chronic pain. This piece is in response to J.D.’s “Scorch Marks: Prose Poem.”
