Anger

I like this one, it's interesting. What I find, looking at it now, is that the anger is all symbolically expressed, and violent but never physically so - at another person, I mean - also how it points out the potential for anger to have a healthy expression, although clearly mine in this poem does not. And the most interesting line to me is the last, because that is what we do with anger when we don't let it out in healthy ways. It turns inward and that repressed held-in anger destroys us.

Anger

I am the sun but I do not shine
on the cold and I don't warm the night.
I am the sun and I burn in my rage
and it flares but I don't spread my light.

I am the storm
and I roar as I lash
the earth but I bring no rain.

I am the fire
cradled by my prey
I gorge on its gentle embrace.
As long as there's food for my
flames I shall burn
and when there is nothing
left I shall turn
on myself.

(written on 23 July 1989, at noon).