ANGER

For those of us who find it hard not to wish the worst for people we oppose.

A hard spot in the brain, a foetal core, it feeds
upon submission, swells, gets sore, a strangling
pressure
that has to be appeased—and it is so easy to give
in, so

helplessly fulfilling, it justifies all superstition:
No matter how brief or just, just to feel it, the
bloating
of its hard sharp heat, the burning sweetness, is to know

the pleasure of an agony that is the opposite of love.
A mad opacity, it seals us in, makes us godly to ourselves,
permitting us to see only our own reality, to feel no
cruelty

in our hardness, only violent right. Possessed
by the demon of our lives, our Hyde, a toxic constipation
forcing its relief, we sacrifice our lives, let go, enjoy
it,

the elation of release; its birth: a poisonous self-
titillation
in which our being is replaced by its own elimination.