Pain Poem by Arthur H Rowley

There is an acidity to the evening
and I am unable to weep.
I wrote a poem, tried to pour all the rage
and hollowness of my chest into it,
and it made no sense.

I have lost the poetry by trying to cure myself.
I have been depressed for so long that it terrifies me when I begin to feel less so.
This life is one built on pain.

I am a poet.
I am a musician.
I am an artist.
All I know is made of pain.

I have a book filled with positive whirring thoughts and streams of consciousness.
I pretend as though I do not notice how I don't call them poems
just work
just writing
just pieces.
Poetry is pain.

By trying to kill the pain I am denying the artist within me.
And that notebook, filled with cursive curdling half truths,
is not who I am, here, in this night.
I am no longer the poet either.
I am nothing now, in the dark,
I have evolved from 'writer' to 'nothing'.