"Words"
- Your pain is not important.
- You can't complain
- because Mother's hands traced hourglasses
- and she thrust her hips out
- and made smacking noises
- over your full breasted figure
- when you were thirteen
- and Daddy hid his magazines
- but told you the jokes anyway
- while his eyes traced your full breasted figure
- when you were thirteen
- and Mom dragged you out of bed
- and took you to a neighbor's house
- because Daddy was out drinking
- and she expected anything of him
- he was a bastard
- he might kill her
- he might rape you
- when you were thirteen.
- It was only words.
- You can't complain.
- Others were raped
- beaten
- bloody
- by fathers, mothers, strangers,
- cops.
- You were only assaulted
- with words.
- You've been called crazy,
- divorced, fired,
- your son won't talk to his crazy Mom,
- lots of friends won't talk to you again,
- but you can't complain.
- You haven't been locked up, tied down, burned through
- with electricity,
- shot up with so much thorazine
- you bled from every opening from your ears
- to your cunt.
- You've been lost and cold and hungry
- but never for long enough.
- You've never been trespassed out of the welfare office,
- arrested out of the hospital,
- shot for stealing a loaf of bread;
- you
- can't complain.
- You have to heal the world
- because everybody else's pain
- is more important than yours
- is more real than yours
- yours is only words.
- But
- dig underneath the words
- and you will find
- a heart knotted like a trumpet.
- You can sound that heart
- in words
- and the other wounded hearts
- echo.
- These words are blood,
- chips of white bone.
- These words have stripped the flesh from your back,
- and they can rebuild it.
- It is never
- only words.