On the Disjunction between Suffering and its Expression;
or, Empathological

Reading somebody else’s poems makes me feel
like I imagine a police officer feels
going through a suspect’s stuff – if new, like a heel –
experienced, it isn’t the biggest of deals,
not like retrieving an ID card from a stiff
spattered with blood brain bone before you have to tell
his ma the only son she loved drove off a cliff
because you were chasing him so hard he chose hell
he didn’t know yet sooner than the one he did:
deep yet mundane suffering expressed so tritely
you kid yourself the words have meaning in a bid
to take the clichés seriously not lightly:
in front of you, you’d hug them until they stopped weeping –
but your response to reading them stops you sleeping.

Mike Rogers

 
If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Mike Rogers would be pleased to hear them