The Frustration Monster

personifying whichever emotion you’re predominantly feeling right now.

He's black and red with asterisk eyes,
looming in every room in the house.
He's worse than the Red Queen,
and his bite is bitter;
not interested in anything we say.

I would name him 'Frustration,'
if I'm being polite, or
His 'Evil Unfairness
swooping in to punish
with three hours of merry-go-round insanity
just to file for *gasp!*
unemployment for only
the 2nd time in fifty-plus years.

He stomps, lead-footed,
asking questions without answers.
Not caring that the hubby's company
abruptly slammed its doors to all
two weeks before Christmas, after 29 years
of his working there. No notice, no warning,
and reams of nonsensical paperwork
from the dreaded
Unemployment Bureau aka Frustration
who insinuates, blatantly
that one is a failure
to dare request unemployment even
when Hubby's done nothing wrong.

Mallet-fisted, it pounds him into the ground,
thumping his ego, his self-esteem into shreds
as if to tenderize the already broken.
Visions of mortgages being late,
wondering how long the food
in the freezer will last,
growing ever larger in his mind,
overshadowing the provider
he's always been, the loyal employee,
the staunch advocate, the
hardest working man I've ever known.

I want to take down that black and red
hissing monster who made
my hubby cry. If we could have
afforded the option, he'd have retired
years ago, but we can't, so he is (or was)
working at 73. Sure, just go out
and get another job. I'd like
to give that insideous, holier-than-thou
bureaucratic hypocrite 'another job.'
Sweeping dung perhaps, hanging upside-down
from a barbed wire by his big toe.

But I'm too busy for that,
hanging in here, being supportive,
being strong and insisting we'll muddle through.
Besides, it, that lousy, man-eating hunk of junk,
is bigger than us by far.
It is a conundrum that has no easy solution,
and the pressure it exerts is immense.
Meanwhile, I want to break
that frustration monster into sweep-able pieces
before he breaks down my hubby
into less than that!














Write a poem personifying whichever emotion
you’re predominantly feeling right now.