you know,
you can squeeze that
damn fruit so hard--
use the blender's power and skill
and perhaps still
sugar, ice, water plus your will
can not
turn that lemon
into anything more
than
a sallow, beaten rhind
a fruit too sour to be defined
as novel.
So it is sometimes with pain.
There are the days you can
soothsay
meditate
levitate the ache
(wo)manipulate it in swirls
like smoke from the shaman's pipe.
But all too often, for those of us--
the sick and the dying--
there are these unasked for sugarwater days:
agony so deep that even the angels
weep as they bear witness...
not all lemons make lemonade.