these dangling words
(here)

employed to describe emotional
manifestations

we call "feel-ings"

which i find difficult to identify
with exactitude (not to mention
their fleetingness)

for instance:
when you say good-bye
to a loved one, a
"melan-choly" develops -

an overarching emotional
construct -

below which are visceral pangs
of joy & sentimentalism

an integration of these
coalesce into an emotional
complex of 3 feelings
in simultaneity

now:
how can one word-label
like "melan-choly" describe
the actual phenomena of saying
good-bye to a loved one?

the subtle gradients of
joy & sentimentalism,
and more nuanced others,
are totally missed

feelings are moving
targets: one needs
a giant vocabulary
just to flesh out their
true definitions (& their
periodicity)

thus, feelings are
poems in potential:
waiting to be fleshed out
with gutteral
gesiculations in
time & space

ii.
today i said good-bye
to 3 women,
of 3 generations

each went her own
way in the universe:

one by aeroplane over the
clouds, one by automobile
over some mountain pass,

one i drove myself to
some destination
across the city

3 women of my life -
feminine-others
(& all that goes with that)

moving in 3 distinct paths
away from me
creating a vacuum

dearth of femininity

do i call this "feel-ing"
VACUUM? or do i call it
MELANCHOLY WITH GRADATIONS?

or, do i write a
2 stanza poem about my
love and loss, in this snapshot
of time?

what is the self ,
in relation to the satellite souls
around me?

what is a YOU,
an I ?

which begs another question:
what is this
vacuum
our thoughts escape to?

what is the poet
who questions the
very path we tread?

what is the path
beyond language?