PO-EMotion #21- Guilt

April is National Poetry Month. Every year, my dear friend, and Poet Extraordinaire, Mary Lee Hahn, chooses a theme and writes a poem every day. She blogs and posts at two different places- YEAR OF READING and her fabulous new poetry blog, POETREPOSITORY.

This year's theme is PO-EMotions. Mary Lee promises, "I will write a poem a day that either evokes an emotion, or uses an emotion word in the title or body of the poem. Her list of emotions is here. I'm joining her, at least some days.

Today's emotion is guilt.

"guilt"

those tiny pinpricks

when soul pokes at heart

and says 

pay attention

(c) Carol Wilcox, 2015

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"Guilt"

Five years old
I steal Cathy Phillips' 
pink Barbie tv
The square lump
burns a hole in my leg
and in my heart
until my mom discovers it
and makes me return it

i am late for work, again
held up by teenage dawdling
finally we make it to the car
and my mouth spews forth ugliness
you always and you always and you always
blahblahblahblahblah
they get out of the car and I cry 
later i apologize
but the damage is done
my finger has written
 ugly on the wet cement
of my children's souls 


the conversation 
in the faculty lounge turns ugly
unkind things are said
i do not contribute
nor do i leave
afterwards i swish
diet coke around in my mouth
trying to wash away the bad taste 

perhaps  guilt is a thermometer
measuring the warmth 
of the god-heart
at the center of our being

(C) Carol Wilcox, 2015