Attacks, we used to call
them. Before bone crises
became the fashion.
I describe myself with medical
words - enzymes, metabolic, lipids - bone crises of my youth.
I write poems and essays about pain:
I speak and train about my people.
Earn respect with my tongue,
a pen, that exists
above the shoulders.
Today,
none of it matters.
I cannot move without a scream.
Lay my ankle against the sheet,
cry out in agony.
Turn sideways
caught suddenly,
shockingly, immovably by a
suffocating wave of pain.
Disturbing my wife
scaring the cats
remembering long ago.
Invaded by a screaming,
bayonet-wielding, poison-dart,
dagger-tipped unending militia.
Attacked is how I feel.
From Steven E Brown, Voyages: Life Journeys (Institute
on Disability Culture, 1996).
Reprinted with permission.