Anti-joie

Random quote of the day:

“To know rapture is to have one’s whole life poisoned. If you will forgive a ridiculous analogy, a tincture of rapture is like a red bandana in the laundry that runs and turns all the white wash pink. We should just as soon stay away from any future ecstatic experiences which spoil everyday living by comparison.

—Philip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” Against Joie de Vivre: Personal Essays

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Poetry project, phase 2, week 2: Full Metal Poet

Sometimes my anger is an ice scalpel
cutting with pleasure, glorying
in slicing, hungering for deeper cuts.

Sometimes my anger is a bludgeon,
turned outward to smash and bully,
to get my way, to assuage my ego.
This anger never holds sway:
guilt beats me back as hard as I hit.

Sometimes my anger is a snake
devouring its own tail. But this
Ouroboros, instead of infinite wholeness,
destroys, particularizes, breaks apart.
It consumes me, digesting my own bloated
corpse, dissolving me to nothingness.

Sometimes my anger is a vision,
sweeping away denials and delusions,
forcing me to see things as they
truly stand: in dreamless clarity.

Sometimes my anger is a fire god,
burning me clean and truly righteous,
pulling me up from the pyre to stand
and speak, to do those needful things.
To change myself, and thus the world.

 

My friend Kevin, after reading in last week’s poem about rivers devouring children, said I was a real Metal poet. I agreed that sometimes I was a #FullMetalPoet. This week’s entry does nothing to dispel that notion, I suppose, but that’s why I love poetry. Like all the best things in the world, it doesn’t always have to be pretty.

 

 

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Poetry project, phase 2, week 2: Full Metal Poet

Sometimes my anger is an ice scalpel
cutting with pleasure, glorying
in slicing, hungering for deeper cuts.

Sometimes my anger is a bludgeon,
turned outward to smash and bully,
to get my way, to assuage my ego.
This anger never holds sway:
guilt beats me back as hard as I hit.

Sometimes my anger is a snake
devouring its own tail. But this
Ouroboros, instead of infinite wholeness,
destroys, particularizes, breaks apart.
It consumes me, digesting my own bloated
corpse, dissolving me to nothingness.

Sometimes my anger is a vision,
sweeping away denials and delusions,
forcing me to see things as they
truly stand: in dreamless clarity.

Sometimes my anger is a fire god,
burning me clean and truly righteous,
pulling me up from the pyre to stand
and speak, to do those needful things.
To change myself, and thus the world.

 

My friend Kevin, after reading in last week’s poem about rivers devouring children, said I was a real Metal poet. I agreed that sometimes I was a #FullMetalPoet. This week’s entry does nothing to dispel that notion, I suppose, but that’s why I love poetry. Like all the best things in the world, it doesn’t always have to be pretty.

 

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.