What size is your pain, what strength on a scale of one to ten,

what colour is it, what song does it sing?
My pain is grey. Dull like layers of fog that settle

over the tors of bog-lands. It is a gloom

that spreads and seeps through bone.
	   The song it sings haunts the bleak muirs.

	   It leaks out of mean homes that once bred warriors

whose callous shadows weigh down
the shoulders of men taught to bear grief

with a straight back and a grimace.

	   —————————-

	   Mine is a scarlet poker that sears

nerve, spine, brain and flesh.
It skewers each act and thought

with thrusts so deep

that each breath is a burst of fire.
It has trapped me here on a narrow cot

of catheters, drips, timid shots of morphine.
	   I listen to the faint pulsings of machines

and pray to no god but mercy, for silence.