I drove from the city to the end of the world,
a hook in the land, a spit in the water,
all to hear her story, and to change the bulbs.
Since the cancer she can’t move her right hand.
Tough for a writer, worse for a painter.
Not resignation but hope:
“I’ll have to learn to see different things.

Her family missed the point but the water is still blue.
“My mother saw me bleeding but was too drunk to care.
I was hemorhaging but she wouldn’t take me back to the city,
Just left me on a train, where there was no room to sit.
Blood dripping to the floor, only strength keeps you going.
Blood on your trail, nothing mama can do now.
Mama doesn’t understand, she just put you on the train,
cruel, cruel, cruel world, left you all alone

and the blood drips and no one lets you sit down,
and you just know you’ll be okay,
but you wish someone would care
or at least understand

This trial seems so much more than the weight of the world
bearing down
The zone of deadness, the slim chance to live,
the soaring past the odds, the lifelong habit,
no sudden way out.

I who am given no real pain choose the pain of the world,
so, who’s it up to who gets to choose
what sufferings inhabit us, if you know, sure, if it’s real,
you don’t have the chance to doubt, the time to dream,

ah, but we all wonder aimlessly searching for our problems
until they grab us by the neck,

like the time when I was young that I felt so imprisoned
until at last I found myself in jail:
then, truly, my time was not my own.

When they let me go I felt the future descend, and myself
rise to blow in its wind:

I’ll face my demons on my own time thank you.
We’re all as lucky as we’re willing to be.  [15]