Emotion Stuff

                                 Happy

They’re odd words that have many meanings,

happy and happiness,

but nothing in the dictionary enlightens me

about the meaning most people have for it.

Pleasure, satisfaction, joy, gladness –

those just don’t convey the meaning of,

“Just as long as you’re happy,” or

“She’s a happy person.”

Happiness is a complex phenomenon.

I did some rough internet research

and in a short time found hundreds

of ideas of what happiness is,

written by hundreds of people.

I can’t tell you what it is myself, though.

Although I experienced joy

when my first daughter was born,

and magnificent pleasure each time

I picked up and hugged either daughter

when they were small enough,

and satisfaction every time I’ve done a difficult task well,

and gladness every time a woman

has made herself close to me for a while,

I can’t say that I’ve ever been

all-the-way-through just plain happy –

because I don’t know how to be.

It’s a skill I just never learnt

when I was growing up,

and that’s when people have to learn it.

             Forms of Sadness

When I see images on the internet

of such horrors as

newly hatched male offspring of layer hens

on conveyor belts to their doom,

and hopeless people whose lives

have been blown to rubble over bullshit,

and on and on with other evidence of the cruelty

upon which the world of power seems to depend,

I feel a deep sense of sadness and helplessness

about the nature of things,

but I move on.

When I remember images in my mind’s eye

of my then-adolescent daughter,

who had apparently inherited

my frustrating lack of terpsichorean talent,

spending hours on the porch

practicing for the jazz-dance exams

which she hadn’t a hope in hell of passing,

I weep real tears uncontrollably for hours.

        History

One of the things

that make historical

murder mysteries

attractive to me

is that I

don’t feel

any great sorrow

at the fate

of their victims,

because they’d all

be long dead

by now, anyway.

              People, Patience, & Prudence

Barbra Streisand always got right up my nose.

Not only was she the sort of Jewish girl

that my inhuman mother was always pushing on me,

but she had that insufferably self-confident, self-assured attitude,

not to mention that whiney, drama-queen voice

that always made me want to puke,

and her signature song,

that crap about people who need people,

is the opposite of the way

things seem to me.

I’ve discovered that reclusiveness

suits me better than anything else,

and that there’s not a person I know

whom I can’t get along without,

if that’s the only way to avoid

some emotional or psychological distress or another,

even if that means limiting my human contact

to the people who sell me the shit

I need to survive.

It seems that all I really need

is a secure supply of wine, cheese, tomatoes, gluten,

weird-shit music, and mystery novels from the library.

I can cuddle and kiss my wine bottles.

                   Death and Lachrymosity

I don’t know how many songwriters, lyricists,

and other types of rhyme-makers

have mined the obvious connection

between ‘died’ and ‘cried’.

I never have.

Neither have I ever cried

in response to the death of anyone.

I was just bewildered

when my daddy died when I was nine,

and no death since then has affected me as much,

not even that of my favourite dog.

Death just inspires no emotion in me,

but then, I’m an emotional cripple,

                     No Meaning

I feel curiously detached from myself

and have done so, by and large,

since my world fell apart,

doing my best to live only from moment to moment.

The only emotion I seem able to feel is pain,

although sometimes anger flares up, unwelcome, for a moment,

and I deeply dislike feeling pissed off,

so my conscious objective is to feel nothing.

Sometimes, however,

such as when I look at the patterns

painted on the ceramic bowls out of which I eat,

or stamped onto the linoleum on the floor of the loo,

my mind becomes clearly focused

on the pointlessness

of everything,

including my pain.

                   Failure

Failure is a state of being

rather than an event.

I’ve always been a failure,

for example,

even from birth.

My mother wanted a girl,

but I failed her by being born me,

so she never forgave me,

and always made it clear

that although I was sometimes

a possession that provided her with a benefit or two,

I was always a failure as an offspring.

One of the strangest days of my life

was my twenty-sixth birthday,

when I took the most eclectic combination

of psychoactive substances

I’ve ever consumed

and entered into a well-populated party

with the theme

of “26 years of failure”.

In recent years I’ve consoled myself

with the hubristic illusion

that at least I haven’t been a failure

as a daddy,

but now it turns out that

that isn’t true, either.

It’s my state of being, after all.

         Cringing

I often think of myself,

metaphorically,

as an innocent puppy,

unable to understand

when the people

scold and punish me,

but automatically,

and unreflectingly

accepting and internalising

those judgements.

             Can’t Help It

When I watch Usain Bolt run on TV

I can’t help it,

but the absolutely pure

technical beauty of his stride

makes me want to cry.

Punk Politics & Love

I’m in love

with all the members

of Pussy Riot.

Their courage,

their audacity,

their politics,

their style,

their energy,

their singing,

their dancing,

their poetry,

their smiles,

their body language,

and yes, their bodies

turn me on completely,

even though

they could be

my granddaughters.

It doesn’t matter

that none of them

will ever know

that I’ve existed, either.

It’s not that variety

of love.