Let me heal: take this pain, in this place,
I’ll put on a very dear, very brave face,
and celebrate the message: Let pain be your guide,
say the surgeons, say the soothsayers,
say the wise: let pain lead me down the garden path,
the road less traveled, and make all the difference:
ask not why, but what I can do for my body,
which lies in wait in the long grass, supine, and decides.
The nerve is the arbiter, the brain a poor squire,
shoddy worksmanship in the axonal mortar.
O sing a song of sixpence, of six divine fires,
nociceptive the baritone, neuropathic the castrato,
and let me heal: sailing by the light of neurotransmitter stars,
let me heal in the one true place of peace, of quell,
of where I can learn to get well, and be free of eternal chain,
pain patch plugging all the leaks in the dyke, too easy for tears,
too stupid to die, I cry-reflex in the night, the vicious sigh
of having correspondence from wars, of mortal wounds,
of crash courses, of scorched-earths, of ends.