MY DISABILITIES

I have eyes that glossed over

swept past or missed

eyes that don't read between the lines

a gaze that does not or will not capture wrong and wrong-doing the

perpetrator and the victim.

I have eyes that failed.

There are cries I did not or would not hear cries that are drowned in

preferred song or footnoted for convenience.

Failed ears have I.

I love perfumes

the scent of Araliya

Jasmine too,

but some,

less fashionable fragrances

pass me by

for I simply turn away,

for I have discerning nostrils.

And then I have a tongue

an appendage articulating partiality

an adjunct that I often hide

or make disappear in acquired delicacies; Yes, I am often inarticulate

and not for lack of vocabulary or word-play skill.

I have hands that will not be raised

to protest certain tyrannies,

knees that will not support certain stands.

You see I am crippled

by an incapacitation of choice.

And I even have a mind, let me add,

made of acquired dismemberment,

deliberately sorted out,

edited out and edited in

not so much for simpler distillation

as to hold the rose and throw the thorn.

But then, let me confess

in this weak moment,

that even now,

so strong, so able,

I cannot say for sure,

what I kept and what I threw,

if rose is thorn or thorn rose,

And that perhaps in the intricacies of choice I've proved feeble,

and in the end a lesser mortal.


Words are borrowed and reconfigured; they mean little if not shared. 
So do what you will with these lines.  And this includes comments. MS