healing pain (for LL, my SM88)

[poetedge5455]

Your words hurt me
wound me to my soul
it isn't what you think

you give me the pain I need
to feel. To feel again
No, I'm not craving
for your bootheel
in my spine

Not straining my tongue
to taste that smooth leather
you know that if I imagined
that scene, I would be the one
holding the whip.

The hurt you give
is the nurse cleaning the wound
rebreaking the bones
that long ago
set mishapen.

And I hate you in that moment
as all my mistakes ooze
out of the wounds you open
but I have been around
enough takers to know the difference
between the sadists
and the healers

So we are each other's anguisettes
urging each other to break
those deformed contours
knowing that the healing kiss
is but a moment behind
rather than the snicker
that left us limping forward
swearing we were ok
that we were too strong to be hurt
except by ourselves.

I walk in golden light
awaiting the next healing arrow
you will fire into me
finally knowing
the right way
that love hurts.

[lorencino]

This is an interesting thought—the extension of "tough love" to a more proactive compassionate infliction of hurt. It is exciting to observe because the ice is very thin indeed when such acts of love have the potential to flip into sadistic pleasure. It is safer, though, to observe the recipient of the resetting of bones express gratitude and laud the act of compassionate hurting. I would be more uneasy hearing the justification for inflicting pain coming from the agent and yet the two are inseparable in the act of promoting healing.

This close proximity of healing and destroying should not be mistaken for similarity for they are moral opposites of infinite proportions. It is we who confuse the boundaries between good and evil as when "right" becomes "self-righteous" but it is also we who can, as in this poem, transcend the petty and grow into that moral flowering that can, with a touch of the fanciful, be described as the universe becoming conscious of itself.

So here I am struggling to explain what I sensed in your poem and not saying it nearly as well as you say it in that poem. Maybe after a cup of coffee to kick-start my mind? (The flowering of the universe dependent on a drug?) I had to look up "anguisettes" and find it perfectly suited to the content of this poem, and a useful idea to add to the store of our culture.

[poetedge5455]

Originally Posted by lorencino

This is an interesting thought—the extension of "tough love" to a more proactive compassionate infliction of hurt. It is exciting to observe because the ice is very thin indeed when such acts of love have the potential to flip into sadistic pleasure. It is safer, though, to observe the recipient of the resetting of bones express gratitude and laud the act of compassionate hurting. I would be more uneasy hearing the justification for inflicting pain coming from the agent and yet the two are inseparable in the act of promoting healing.

This close proximity of healing and destroying should not be mistaken for similarity for they are moral opposites of infinite proportions. It is we who confuse the boundaries between good and evil as when "right" becomes "self-righteous" but it is also we who can, as in this poem, transcend the petty and grow into that moral flowering that can, with a touch of the fanciful, be described as the universe becoming conscious of itself.

So here I am struggling to explain what I sensed in your poem and not saying it nearly as well as you say it in that poem. Maybe after a cup of coffee to kick-start my mind? (The flowering of the universe dependent on a drug?) I had to look up "anguisettes" and find it perfectly suited to the content of this poem, and a useful idea to add to the store of our culture.

I can always count on you finding a dimension/explanation in my pieces that I worry may be too subtle. For the most part, I have tried to break away from heavy handed, club-over-the- head pieces, (something I was prone to in the beginning), so what I usually fret about is 'did I pull back to far? You are adept at picking up those parts. I don't know if that is because I did my job, or it is just that you just get my style, lol. Either way, thank you.

I think when we talk about personal growth, and how hard change is, especially change you can't recognize by introspection, we initially don't want to hear what we need to. Then when we do hear it, we dislike the peerson who told us. If we progress far enough we get to disliking the part we need to change, and then love the person who initiated the process.

If you can find a person who makes you go through all the stages nearly instantly, you are blessed. And I have.