"More than pain" by Maslina Arshad

More than pain

By Maslina Arshad

what the gladiators
didn’t know was
the pain was not more
from the arrows
flown from the folds
of the Colosseum

but from wounded pride
numbing anger
of being trapped
for days, years
leashed within
dark confining cages

that pain was more real
than the blood
from the arrows
piercing their insides
hurting more than
the raw bleeding wounds

© 2008 Maslina Arshad

Listen to this poem:

Maslina Arshad : this poem is about the pain inside which hurts more but cannot be seen.  It uses the imagery of a gladiator to illustrate this condition.

Maslina Arshad is a closet poet who is also a lawyer by day. She loves reading and is especially blessed to have married a fellow bookworm. She loves watching the rain fall, staring into space for ideas to form into words. She has been writing since many moons ago but never submitted anything to anywhere, until the existence of this webzine. She would love to publish the rest of her work someday. In the meantime she is happy chasing her son chasing the cat, somewhere in the middle of a town called Temerloh. Visit her blog, to see more of her work.