The Warm Piss of Rage - Oct 14 2021

 

The Warm Piss of Rage

Oct 14 2021

Anger erupts

red hot,

spewing lava

ejecting rocks,

venting ash

and poisonous gas

and blocking out the sun.

Choking and spluttering

pressure ratchets up-and-up,

faces flush

with apoplectic ire.

Antacids don't help,

and perspective is hopeless

in such hot volcanic fire.

But consequence be damned

when it feels this good,

wallowing

in self-righteousness

the warm piss of rage.

Forgetting

that like a sugar high

you crash,

embarrassed

at the damage you exact

your lack of control.

The broken hand, bashing the wall.

The relationships fractured

and the contagion of anger

unleashed on the world.

How fortunate

that bad temper improves with age.

Because the nearer the end

the more considered one gets.

Old men,

who know what really matters

what soon will pass.

Who have learned

to hold their temper in check

stay calm when provoked.

And who nod understandingly

when the fractures rend

in their younger tectonic friends

and the anger wells up and explodes.

On the latest Freakonomics podcast, Arthur Brooks began by speaking about anger and contempt in the context of increasing political polarization. I know him as a regular contributor to the Atlantic, where he writes a weekly piece about happiness; but here is how he was introduced on the podcast.

Arthur Brooks is an economist who for 10 years ran the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the world. He has come to believe there is only one weapon that can defeat our extreme political polarization: love. Is Brooks a fool for thinking this — and are you perhaps his kind of fool?

I quite like his description of anger as hot, while contempt is cool but more withering: a combination of anger with the even more powerful emotion of disgust. I thought about my proclivity to anger, and how it has been tempered with age. A poem seemed in order. Perhaps even a series on the deadly sins.

I'm pleased with the title. I look for a title that arouses a reader's curiosity and entices her to give the poem a chance. But I think I may have given away my best line, and in so doing detracted from its power and potential to surprise. Although with repeated reading, I think my favourite line is actually the contagion of anger / unleashed on the world. Because anger begets anger: so the sin is passed on, it's not only yours.

(The fractured hand, by the way, is very common and quite predictable: the distal end of the 5^th metacarpal, which comes from bashing the wall with a closed fist – the so-called “Boxer's Fracture”.)