Emotions are the Vomit of the Soul

Writing has been nothing but overpolishing in recent days,

Because everyone wants someone to be the next Frost,

Whitman, Dickinson, Poe.

Structure feels like fallacy to me,

not because it is contrived

but because emotions are the worst kinds of structures.

Like comparing a triangle to a confusing non-Euclidean jumble

and you're just confused because it doesn't make sense.

Vomit is not a very nice shape to look at,

and very often do we describe our words like that,

our thoughts and our feelings,

"word-vomit."

Vomit is pretty true to itself, all things considered.

Like when you get too drunk and begin

violently retching into a cheap plastic trash can

after you were just told to have a good night by all your best friends.

The vomit is telling you that you drank way too much,

and that the Korean bowl you had for dinner was very spicy

-is still, 

very spicy-

and it will burn your throat for the next few days with bile

and the liquor that you gorged yourself on

because you made poor life choices up to this point.

Emotions are like the vomit of the soul,

because you act stupid all the time and you're not trying to

or you feel in love and it's impossible to explain why

or you yell at your best friend without realizing how badly hurt they are.

And then, as you always do:

You cry.

Or you get miserably drunk in my case, to each their own.

But nonetheless you will probably cry,

which is your body vomiting up your emotions.

Which is a really roundabout way to say that poems are like emotional vomit

that splats on a paper and then is reiterated and polished and cleaned

until it is a shining vomit diamond.

But I like my spicy Korean booze regurgitation because it feels more real.

There is technically structure,

but it flows naturally

and doesn't feel like you're being guided,

but being brought along by the wrenching esophagus of emotions.

Diamonds are nice and neat to look at,

but that vomit will have you looking for real,

at all of the chunks of wet kimchi,

the brown-orange hued bile from mango pico de gallo,

bits of thick guacamole that were yet-to-be digested,

and the sound of a gagging person, 

muffled by cheap plastic 

to top it off.

It is messy and uncomfortable,

like all your emotions.

Now that I think about it,

this is kind of disgusting and vile.

Sorry.

Reviews

[John Cardwell]

Sounds like a very bad night. Hope you feel better.