My pain is a tremble in the Earth. 



For thousands of miles it stretches deep,

into the dark core. 



It feels hot like passion, 

smells like the burnt out bourbon at a blues bar. 



The pain itself recoils at the sight of justice and peace, 

and all good things--- 

or worse, sometimes it turns those good things into new wells

of deep, arduous suffering, overflowing they are. 



The pain is a shadow, 

dripping with the powerlessness of the second dimension, 

flat yet lurking constant in 

--or as-- 

the absence of light. 



It creeps like slithering serpents sliding around on their bellies, 

hissing and undulating and swallowing whole parts of my body. 



Deep in the earth it trembles, 

and it bursts open in my skin, 

a volcano I had declared dormant years ago. 



Am I my pain? Or simply its creator, 

I wonder, as I watch it consume me. 

I realize then that I am ingesting myself whole, 

barely tasting the saltiness of my flesh as I crawl down my own throat

--in the core it is no more.