New Poetry by Vern Fein

The Right to Complain

I won’t compare and contrast

the pain in my life to others

like a dutiful rhetoric student

composing an obligatory essay

assigned by an older teacher

nursing his retirement years.

I want the pain to be mine.

I want to own the hurt.

I want to feel my daughter's divorce,

my son's vandalized car,

my dog's surgery.

 

I won’t compare my life events

to the ravages of a hurricane

blowing an island paradise into the sea

or the latest mass shooting

composing a cemetery from a concert

or the death of my best friend's daughter

cancer slicing her life in half.  

But why can't I complain

when people ask me how I am?

Why can't I bray my petty pipings

in the grieving face of real tragedy?

 My maiden aunt often said:

"You are only in your own skin."

Does that comfort me?

- © Vern Fein 2021

A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over one hundred fifty poems on over sixty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven's Review, Nine Muses, Monterey Poetry Review, and Corvus Review.