Profane Pain

copyrighted

by Cynthia Lott Vogel

3-25-11

Something is there....

It rudely elbow-shoves its way into my peaceful sleep,

Tossing aside my dreams like fist-fighting TV ninjas accost an opponent.

It screams its way through the darkness splitting the silence with an alarm shrill as an

Ambulance shrieks terror into the night.

A raucous pain as unwelcome as a 4 a.m. wake-up call.

Pain starts at my exploding head and screams its way down my spine,

Numbing my lumbar-stump legs and splitting those wooden appendages as cleanly as

An ax might fell a mighty oak.

Faith music sings into the night mocking my pain

(Or is it the other way around?)

The sweet tunes and their lilting joy oppose and are made foolish by

The unholy sacrilege of agony.

The joyful tones become the heresy

As the profanity of pain assumes the throne...

Spewing its vulgar vernacular

which then becomes my mother tongue.

A becoming as unbecoming as they come.

No.

This is the cross:

A bloody debauchery of Promise.

A spectacle of suffering that abases every hope

of Life reigning glorious and is rather,

A revolting depravity of expectation.

It calls to question

every assumption of life and self.

And challenges every fiber of Belief in my being;

Squashes every aspiration of my future.

But those concerns are the background drumbeat to the

Melody line of agony.

The immediate thing

to be tackled (by) is the present tensing of every fiber

and the shrill cackle of a tone-deaf singer

-to whom Music is a foreign tongue-

Who shrieks her way into my morning and

Launches the paroxysm of dance's mockery:

The convulsing contortions;

My body's gyrations to her tune

in its efforts to Find. Some. Relief. NOW.

Hand shaking top popping pill dropping

water guzzling desperate measures

come from desperate people

In desperate times of desperate need.