Emotions

If emotions had shape,
they’d look like clouds.

Happiness would wander across deep blue.
Small and fluffy
with no grey hue,
just bright and white
and light with the joy of it all.

Sadness would be dull and flat,
Covering all with deadpan still.
Heavy and low.
An oppressive pall
that stills and removes the reason for all.

Anger would billow up mighty and high,
both screaming white and threatening black.
Flashing and roaring
and threatening the world,
diminishing all in it’s track.

Love would be smeared across calm grey blue
like watercolour smudged with tears.
With tints of orange, pink and red
as the fiery sun finally calms
and leaves us to be content.

Hatred would be roiling low
with turbulent tones of black and grey.
Rumbling past at tree top height,
spitting and glowering
and dulling the light.

Jealousy would be hazy and thin.
Oppressive, confusing with Turner sun
corrupting the light,
distorting our sight
and leaving truth limpid.

Compassion would settle gentle and still.
A quiet white mist
on the valleys and hills
and cause us to stop
and consider the ills of the world.

Hope would be high and textured and white.
Bright lacy ribbons stretched across blue.
Threads of potential
with definite shape
that hold new promise of change in the wind.

Fear would be fog, silent and dark.
Obscuring the truth, sly moving stillness,
drifting around us to get round behind us.
Sinister spirits that steal our judgement
and make us like fools, lost.

[© David Kitching 2005]

Mindclouds

There’s something that drives me
to want something
more than what I have.

In considering what my life
amounts to,

I see a cloud that set out to be
a majestic thing that strode
across landscapes.

But it was waylaid.
and merely drizzled

and became fog that did nothing
more than obscure.
I didn’t want that.

But wanting makes what is
and sets us our challenge.

And when we fail,
as we certainly will, we learn

to see how now is what we are
and not some vision of what might be.

Some bulbous cumulus that
thinks to force the world to be
and then blows itself out.

We are more drifting nimbus
that can quietly watch
and no more.

[© David Kitching 2006]