Tarius Montayj Jones | Pain

“Pain”

It comes every year, like the passing of tradition;
there is no February’s leap year,
nor is there any grey area in between
to separate Black from white; just cycles:
revolving and prolific unitary motions;
dissimilar to the ones seen in death,
that droop, unsmiling, untouched—
objects that flit into the afterlife;

—twirling with an unfamiliar cockiness
—sometimes stammering,
because it has become burdened…
with a speech deficiency:
sometimes with infection:
sometimes with force;

and it smiles and frowns like the sky…
when it rains and the sun is still shining;
still painful, still stressful;

—then it stretches across the sky,
as if covering a child for sleep,
and reverberates,
like that creaking sound made by stairs
when footsteps trample upon them:
hard and slow; stirring without silence,
staring without perception;

sometimes, it hangs in the air
as if it were the straggling cats that howl
on the tip of fences,
even after the vigil hours

+++—quiet—cold—pacific—is the scream;

—coming in like a ship pulling into dock,
or an airplane right before making an emergency landing;
moving but still crouching, staring but still faraway;
emptiness here, voided there,
like a barren field of universal silence;

but why couldn’t it be like words—
these words that refuse to come
when they are needed most?

the selfsame words that refuse to flow with fluidity;
in perfect harmony, on this paper;
with elegance; speaking within themselves as if they
possessed human attributes;
these words that are so far away
that they barely seem to exist;
why won’t they come instead?

this thing isn’t real because
no thing could have a sun with that
many tones of yellow and still be dark,
no thing could be so pacified that a
stampede of elephants could not disturb its stillness,
even though the thing itself isn’t still,
nor has it ever been;

sometimes it fades slowly away,
like the puffed smoke of a cigarette,
but it is never truly gone;

sometimes it is so absolute that it becomes circumjacent,
and you cannot separate yourself from its grasp;
you may walk into the night and see the sun shining,
but when you reach for it,
it disappears as if it were the false anticipation
that belittles a child on a giftless Christmas Eve;
then it comes:

+++24 hours;

+++++1,440 minutes;

+++++++86,400 seconds.

*****

Poem (c) Tarius Montayj Jones
Image: Jr Korpa Unsplash modified