My Pain

I’m trying to string together three words

which I hate more than I hate myself:

gobsmacked, hubby and...when I realise

that words no longer count for much at all.

And that’s me back down, head on the floor.

It’s like Cathal Coughlan goes in his song:

till I’ve seen how low I can go.

It’s like what my ancestor told me in a dream:

You’ll be a sponge for the pain of others.

It’s like what I told the lassie from the local paper:

I do not suffer for my art, I just suffer.

And face it, while we’re at it, it’s like

what curly Shona said that night at Graffiti

when all the gang were gathered for the show:

how she reckoned I would be the first to die,

or the time I slipped back from the bogs in Bo’s

to hear my best friend tell a stranger girl

who’d been sweet in my company, mind how you go

with Roddy, he’s damaged goods, you know.