As if our suffering were a badge of honor

Yin and yang, beauty
and ugliness combined
in our effort to survive.
Some people just give up,
existing in the numbing space
between life and death,
past and present,
frozen in time.
This can never be said for poets
who abrade raw nerves with
the sandpaper of their writes
until memories spill onto the page
in artfully arraigned hieroglyphics of pain,
leaving clues for the reader
to examine and judge,
to revel in or deny the history of us,
as if our suffering were a badge of honor
and membership card
for the human race
or at least acknowledgement
our right to draw breath.