Nailing down bitterness

Emotion is a hard thing to nail down

Once upon a time, I suppose, someone out there

Decided that the kind of thing you feel before you go and

Kill somebody (or another ill advised action)

Is called anger

 

Then someone out there

Decided that if perchance you

Had a good day today

The emotion is happiness

 

Then came Sadness, Excitement, Anxiety

 

Things became more and more complicated, and perhaps more names were called for

Disillusionment, Nostalgia, Melancholy

Until now you feel something, and there’s a word to describe it

And once or twice,

you know that the only true satisfaction,

The only true release, lies

In naming it for what it is, it’s true accepted name

 

Otherwise we are left to just:

“I feel so… So… so…!?”

Helpless? Judged? Unappreciated? Indifferent? Defeated?

There’s a word out there, and if I could hang on to it…

Misunderstood? Underwhelmed? Encumbered? Bitter?

The list goes on…

 

And the saddest aspect of it all

Is that the next day, when you no longer need the word

No longer need the satisfaction

The sweet flavor of identification of emotion in your mouth

Is when you will indubitably name your emotion

Passionless, and emotionless as the man who created the word for it:

And perhaps now you feel bitter. But how about the man who will never find that word he searched for?

I ask:

If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, did the tree fall?

And if a man feels an emotion, with no chance of identifying it, did he feel anything at all?