You Cannot Outwit the Pain

You Cannot Outwit the Pain

(“The Lord was angry with Israel again, and he caused David to turn against the Israelites. He said, ‘Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.’” 2 Samuel 24:1)

It is impossible to outsmart the pain,
no matter your reinforcements, the arrows outwit your
finest strategies.

Rally the troops--and head, feet, lungs and heart
will still beat with the impulses; the grated shards of the brain.

Line up your best defenses, pray, sleep, cry, weep or sing,
and the pain will laugh once the amen is hummed; the sting awaits
the next unguarded thought.

The broken leg instructs the brain to crawl,
the broken arm presses the brain to scrawl,
the broken heart shatters the brain’s defenses,
and pain wraps it all with aching for the deep
and moats too wide to cross.

Suffering is only denied to those who throw their pain away,
who; anger and heat, judgment and fire, lies and deceit,
platitudes and bromides--setting the world ablaze to heal
the burn they will not feel.

You cannot outwit the pain.

But the aching know the pain is wiser, higher, wider,
and uncrossable. It is inscrutable and hidden behind
cupboards and bookshelves, prayerbooks and hymnals,
climax and nadir, silk and sackcloth, others and our own;
it will not retreat though we have assessed the enemy,
completed our military census,
and called its name out plain.

It is impossible to outsmart pain.
And perhaps that is why such willing wrists
took the iron spikes as a scepter,
took such abusive cries as a coronation song,
and cried like we all cry when pain makes us feel

forgotten.

Why have you forgotten?

It is impossible to outsmart the pain.