Pain
Pain in another’s heart is imagined
but never experienced the same.
Empathetic souls imagine
how they would feel to identify.
Others contend their pain is superior
but yours is nothing serious.
Religion declares your pain is penance;
enduring it the key to salvation.
Hatred promotes this pain,
your kind should suffer for existing.
Love cares
Love reaches out
Love would take your place.
Middle School Parking Lot
A sea of black with yellow waves,
Shines with wetness
Under glaring halogen lights.
Stepping off the sidewalk,
Approaching the White Buick.
Pellets of Ice Melt:
Sodium, Magnesium,
Calcium Chloride broken
in chunks at my feet
Pine cones and maple leaves,
Grass clippings from Fall mowers
Blown together in hay colored islands.
A teacher lost a red pen,
A seventh-graders’ bottle of
Peach nail polish
Orphaned carelessly,
Fallen from an open backpack.
John Homan is a poet and percussionist from Bend, Oregon. He is a graduate of Indiana University. His work has appeared in Chiron Review, Former Cactus, and Misfit Magazine among others. He is an ESL tutor in a middle school, happy to have given up 20 years of corporate customer service. He lives with his wife and two cats in Elkhart, Indiana.
Twitter handle @john_homan. John’s Website is: https://about.me/john_homan
resurrectionmag.com 
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