Don't feed me poetry about the way nerves sing when they burn,

they don't:

They scream.

There is nothing pretty about pain,

There is no romance in suffering

Lonely is like cold water

And drowning is not beautiful;

Gulping thick expanses of salt and lake is not art,

It is lungs filled with poison.

So don't tell me

Falling under is like falling in love

Or that splinters are stitches to keep skin from floating away:

Pain is only beautiful when lessons are learned

When choice is available to make it so:

The surge of expression--

the art, the poetry, the song, the dance--

that bleed from pain can be beautiful, 

but don't make out pain itself to be so. 

It's not.

Art can be of suffering, but pain itself is not art.