Category Archives: Emotion

PROMPT: Negative Feelings

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Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
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A practice of feeling gratitude is extremely beneficial in that regard. Simple meditative practices help one become aware of thoughts and feelings more quickly, before they are fed through rumination, making the down-spiral cycle easier to disrupt.

And, sometimes, I rant. This usually veers quickly into comedic territory and I’m reminded of the ridiculousness of taking human life too seriously, given the absurdity of being primates in pants who love shiny things. (It would be unimaginable if human life weren’t absurd.)

Mind Storm [Free Verse]

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A loose shard of thought
   Flips and twists about in
     My brain,
 Poking sensitive tissue,
    And sending firestorms
     Riffling through my circuitry.
 I can't really say I feel each 
    Prickle or pierce, but they 
     Do make me wince, sometimes.

Killing Bliss [Free Verse]

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I found bliss.

And cooked it on the
   simmer setting 
     of my soul --

That vacant hole that
   I let swell with color 
      and light.

My only worry was that
   it would flash fry all 
      that I am.

But one worry is enough
   to kill the joy, 
     to kill everything vibrant 
     & reckless within.

The bliss was quenched,
    and it steamed & sizzled,
      and all I could hear was its
      deafening sound.

PROMPT: Happy

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When are you most happy?

When I allow myself to be. Hope you weren’t looking for an answer like, “Wednesdays between 4 and 7 pm.”

Lion Mind [Haiku]

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the lion looks cross,
 but, perhaps, it’s just a mask.
  who knows the lion’s mind?

PROMPT: Motivation

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Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?
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The need to break free of the program -- e.g. to be master of fear & anger, not slave to them.

Green Hills [Free Verse]

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fingers of forest
 interspersed with 
  fingers of pasture --

the hidden & 
 the exposed --
 
two kinds of danger:
 being seeable &
  being unable to see.

is the mind fearful
 of being exposed
  the same as the mind fearful
   of being confined?

PROMPT: Emotion

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What positive emotion do you feel most often?

Contentment: the most sustainable of feelings.

PROMPT: Peace

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What brings you peace?

Being in the now, and feeling – but not feeding – emotional sensations.

Queen of Slaves [Lyric Poem]

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Of all the masters & all the slaves,
   I find that mind fire burns in waves.
 And sometimes the emotions derail
   too quickly to lengthen the exhale. 

 Trees falling in the forest, unheard,
   can still crush a nest of baby birds.
 Turns out it's not the sound that matters,
    but what the destruction leaves in tatters.

The phrase “Queen of Slaves” comes from a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem (Canto 4, No. 24)