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Recorded Reading (2:26): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tgbzfod66h6mbb4ioppsb/Expert-in-Sorrow.mp3?rlkey=ah9jw1327g60kd8r3m264vd8d&dl=0

*****

Expert in Sorrow

Over seasons, over years
I’ve waded through a million tears
There’s small hope of bringing me to
Despair I’ve not already viewed
Partaken of, and made my friend
Its message brought within to lend
Itself to the sum total of
This vast uncondit’ional love
And that of anyone pays heed
What comes of it for them to read

I am an expert sorrow in
Most records may not e’en begin
In depth, degree nor yet amount
Hope for a fraction to account ~
Unless you have lost everything
The smallest pleasure to you bring
Over and over again
With no good notice, more, and then
When you present yourself unto
Those who say they have love for you

Excruciating made to know
How far that false love really go ~
Unless much of your life you’ve gone
A balancing support upon
Spent too much time confined to bed
Yet found a way to lift your head
In successful self defence
Nor paid venal deference
To those who thought their hay to make
Easy advantage of you take

You have no room for feeling smug
Unless you’ve walked past urban thugs
Somehow between creating peace
Enough decide you not to fleece
Of shoes, of clothes, of money, of
Your willing or unwilling love
The entire time keeping to
A moral code central to you
Allowing nothing ever sell,
No gentle falsehood ever tell

When you the pressures calculate
Sufficient make me to abate
Requirements your commitments for
Which, new reviewed, you now abhor
Seeing some advantage more
In other than you said before,
Remember that if down it come
To which of us will first become
Unable hardship function to
It won’t be me, it will be you

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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