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Pieces of Agony 

Reason pays attention with one ear. 
Small voices want to speak 
with thick lips; want to plead, like men 
on death row, for their lives. 
They pilfer strength from weary sinew, 
"I am so sorry. Please believe me.  It 
was never my intention to cause pain," 
emerges, stinking like yesterday's vomit 
on a road trip.  Crawls then, slowly 
off misery's face, as if it is a clot 
surfacing from treachery's scab. 
"Sorry is something you say when you 
accidentally kick a dog or knock a bucket," 
Sitting in silence, an imbecile urinating 
in shame's underwear, I think, yes, 
it's what you say if you forget a name, 
or step on someone's shoe. 
Onion skins of complexity carve letters 
into wooden air between us, want 
to write themselves into meat of memory. 
What is a word?  Frailty's use of language 
becomes a demonstration of emotion, 
a piece of agony waiting for rain to fall, 
to bleed darkness down windowpanes. 

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