Crag

He was a barren crag of a man
open to feelings and stripped bare by them
but unable to move out of the way.

6 April 1991

I have mixed feelings about feelings. I like to think of myself as an intellectual because I prize reason above emotion but the truth is I am a sensitive creature and rarely in control of those emotions. They dictate to me. Actually they bully me. I don’t trust them. There was a time when I did. Now I take what they offer under advisement. If you were to ask me how I’m feeling right now I’d say, “Crap,” and I do but that’s pretty much my default these days. Not sure if it counts as an emotion though but as I don’t think I’m crap what else could it be? What else is there? We think and we feel and that’s it. Maybe ‘crap’s’ a compound emotion, a bit of sadness, some despondency, a touch of ennui, a dash or two of unhappiness and a smattering of physical discomfort all vying for attention in front of the backdrop of mawkish sentimentality that always descends whenever I struggle to write about one of these old poems.

No comments:

Short stories

McStorytellers
□ Blank Page
□ Zeitgeist

Metro Mums
□ The Pooh Brooch

Vine Leaves
□ The Contraption (p.17)

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ Shoeboxes

Paragraph Planet
□ Control - 4th July

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ Ugly Truths

Ranfurly Review
□ Just Thinking
□ Disintegration

Static Movement
□ Jewelweed

Poetry

Vine Leaves Journal (p.4)
□ Hiding Places
□ The Human Face

Waterhouse Review
□ Foretastes and Afterglows

Mused
□ The Language of Hands

Ink, Sweat and Tears
□ Touching Poem

BlazeVOX
□ IT
□ An Honest Poem
□ Do the Right Thing
□ Suburbia II

Snakeskin
□ After Pinter

The Lake
□ A Matter of Fact
□ The Seasons

The Socrates
□ In the Wake

The Open Mouse
□ The Only Way
□ Schisms

The Rusty Nail
□ Deconstructing Jimmy
□ Seek and Ye Shall Find

Ink, Sweat and Tears
□ Fugue

The Pygmy Giant
□ The Wrong Nudes
□ War on Words

The Weekender Magazine
□ Shit Poem

Qarrtsiluni
□ not a Bukowski poem

□ Wee Fictions
□ The Linguist
□ The Bedroom
□ The Things We Knew

Poetry Kit
□ 7 poems

My Poetry and Prose Place
□ Loneliness
□ Messages
□ The Insides of Words

Sixth in Line
□ Lacunae

Wee Fictions
□ Empty Days

Salamander Cove
□ Still Birth

Osprey Journal
□ Anticlimax
□ Tweezers

Right Hand Pointing
□ Hands

Eclectica
□ Silent Echoes
□ Casual Poetry

The Pygmy Giant
□ The Rape of Language

Gloom Cupboard
□ Still Travelling

Apple Valley Review
□ Visitation Rights
□ Marks

Snakeskin
□ Poem Without a Flower

Camroc Press Review
□ Old Haunts
□ The End of All Illusions
□ On Consciousness
□ Beckett

Ranfurly Review
□ Bloody Foreigners

Eclectica
□ The Answer
□ The Other Side of the Poem II

Feathertale
□ Naïve Poem

Caffeine Destiny
□ Sometimes
□ Scrap Values

Gloom Cupboard
□ As Is

The Linnet's Wings
□ Reading into Things

The Linnet's Wings
□ A Matter of Fact II

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ Truth's Last Gasp
□ Synaesthesia

Apple Valley Review
□ Communication Gap
□ Petrified Poem

Right Hand Pointing
□ Cut the Blue Wire

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ If Only Pigs Could Fly

Writers' Bloc
□ Something to Think About
□ A Thoughtful Poem
□ The Skeleton of a Poem
□ Lowest Common Denominator
□ Second Draft