Currency of Pain
By: Jurri Saddler Jr.
Written: 12 Sept 2014

Common knowledge suggests words can hurt
Provoking the reality in a person to pervert
To a point where perspective is corroded
The beat of being now coded

Foggy thoughts thicken with poison
Naïve hearts descend to frozen
Happiness in veins start to congeal
Self-doubt is all that is real

To the ones who developed an aptitude
At holding the weight of verbal abuse
Plaster a false smile that touches the eyes
Hide the echoes of a foreseen demise

Today it’s a natural and a common exchange
To barter with the currency of pain
Make sure to grow your skin thick
Or risk becoming their nuisance

A joke about your shifting frame
Don’t like it, you can always change
Their snickers will fade from head
A new you formed by what others said

But what about traits rigidly set
How can one reasonably correct
The splash of race to which he was born
Or the culture from which she was formed

When people attack at individual’s roots
This can promote tragedy to brew
Possibly hate for the world or himself
A feeling like she’s teetering off life’s shelf

Yet we continue to boldly tease
Shading it under friendship’s normalcy
It is something that has become common place
Funny that malice has a natural taste