The Pain Reliever

Carrie Olivia Adams

Silence is the sound the knife makes
slitting the skin.

Can you identify my weakness,
a pricking sensation
and numbness in one limb?
Can you hold this tongue?
Tell me, what is the function
of meticulous courage.

You are the most yourself
when you are in the motion.
One can be quick and too quick.
I have a stomach too.
It gets hungry.

If I be of necessity opportunity,
if there be the slightest chance of success,
why have a mind, if?

Does that scream in the night across the alley
beg an answer? Are we crowning
into the sludge of an injury and its repair?

An elephant is larger and stronger than a horse;
but it is not preferred as a beast of burden.

Strength is a wee umbrella in the storm.
This the friction sound heard
in inspiration, expiration, or both.
For convenience of description,
blood is bright red and frothy.

Have you earned the privilege
of making mistakes?
There really is no sex in science.
The nomenclature lifts
delicate subjects up from the plane
in which language places them.

Man has more strength,
woman, more endurance.

The hands and the instruments
are the chief sources of danger.
This fever.
There is no subject on which so much has been written
and so little known.

"Invictus" is a short poem by English poet William Ernest Henley. Henley wrote it in 1875, and in 1888 he published it in his first volume of poems, Book of Verses, in the section titled "Life and Death".

INVICTUS 👏🙏

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul

“Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full,

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.”

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“It’s ripe, the melon

by our sink. Yellow,

bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes

the house too sweetly.

At five I wake, the air

mournful in its quiet.

My wife’s eyes swim calmly

under their lids, her mouth and jaw

relaxed, different.

What is happening in the silence

of this house? Curtains

hang heavily from their rods.

Ficus leaves tremble

at my footsteps. Yet

the colors outside are perfect–

orange geranium, blue lobelia.

I wander from room to room

like a man in a museum:

wife, children, books, flowers,

melon. Such still air. Soon

the mid-morning breeze will float in

like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,

I who am unsure

of how my life has happened

or how to proceed

amid this warm and steady sweetness?”

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The Power of Change Motivational Poetry

Immerse yourself in the enchanting world of poetry where each episode brings you closer to the heart of creativity and emotion.

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In the garden where flowers sway,

Sunshine dances, chasing gray.

Whispers of breeze, a sweet delight,

Nature's canvas, pure and bright.

Stars will twinkle in the night,

Moon will cast its silver light.

In this world, so vast, so wide,

Joy and beauty, side by side.

Victory by Bekah Halle

My voice may not be sung.

But tis in the things done

In the choices I make —

Good, bad. Unknown, they leave their wake —

In the stories wrote,

In the battles fought.

In the colours I paint,

And decisions without constraint.

On the quiet places, it resonates,

Growing deeper with faith,

The tune changes,

With the new victories, He arranges.

June's Coming by John Burroughs

Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o'er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.

Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain—
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.

The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint;
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.

How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.

Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.

Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.

At dawn the river seems a shade—
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.

The season's tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.