Airports and Planes: Emotional Zoos

Airports and planes.

No place a better exhibit of human emotion:

Joy arises out of greeting long-lost Love
As does Despair, leaving newly-found Love

Fear arrives out of leaving it all behind
and departs when thinking of everything that’s ahead

Greed lives in the chatter of businessmen making the next big deal
While Modest asks if you’d like a drink with that

Honorable and Prideful are welcomed home with standing applause
Disparaged and Distraught take off to hopefully heal

The sounds of Gleeful, Cheerful, and Merry turn festive the neutral walls
Just as Longing, Delayed, and Stranded make them a cold purgatory

Energetic skips past Sleepy curled up in a corner
While Enlightened rises from a tome two chairs down

And Wanderlust, one of the rarest and most sought emotions of all
Begins to be released—or succumbed to?—here

In flight,
Calm sits next to Anxious
While Bored and Caring attend to us
Behind, Curious gazes out with Admiration
And Faithful hopes something beyond can turn him into Tranquil

Nostalgia’s weight could ground many flights of homecomers
And Ecstasy’s fuel seemingly gets us there quicker

Behind all that, Lust has its release in sneaky fashion.

I decided to get out of my writing comfort-zone for National Poetry Month (which was actually in April), and lately I’ve also been enjoying the “anti-poetry” of Robert M. Drake, Marisa Crane, and Joe Straynge on Instagram. 

Photo is mine, taken while being stranded overnight in Denver International Airport in August 2014.