Terms of power

by Tim Cunningham

Posted to Poetry on 2002-02-08 08:55:00

The cough on a cold january day
is the ache of all life
it swells from obscured places
unknown to man, even illuminated

The sour throat and acking neck
are fantasies compared to
that waste of pain behind your head

Gas, pale as death
thick as greed
slithers up your lungs
breathing for them
shockingly explicit,
adults only…

yet the kids get infected
each crippled, at the edge
of embracing sins and sanity…

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