The first of two poems written in response to the phrase ascendant emotion, undoubtedly a misreading of the words stenciled on a couple of industrial-sized dumpsters at a construction site I drove past this afternoon…

Feelings arise
meaning I am alive

I am uncomfortable
this is part of the rhyme

as when I shout my frustrations
to the sky

railing against perceived slights
because I can’t understand why

they should be
happening to me

I expel them
as fast as I can
without considering
what will come up
to replace them

This is the problem:
I’m so used to pushing feelings away
that I don’t know how
to accept the ones offered to me

Some would call this reticence
or attribute it to trauma or genetics

There may be some truth in this
but I have the feeling
it’s a bad habit
I have yet to unlearn

(25 July 2018)