Language’s Ordnance

a master poet’s script, a
rapier, swift to the bone, cuts
leaving the reader shorn, unsure,
pondering an indistinct light, illuminating
a cloaked dark night of the soul, then comes
instinctively, an urge deep for another strike
another, another, another
exposing buried wounds, as with the pain
profound insights into the human condition
that we share: ache, grief, joy, love, hate
we are fragile and resilient both, that
we, above all, within our shades of skin
are the same

poem and picture © 2016 by DC Lessoway