Paranoia

Paranoia

Am I schizophrenic?

I don't know what it means.

But paranoid?
I must be mediocre.

So do I think that people -

With their magic gods,

Tattoos, rap and Stephen King -

Are somehow not okay?
Yeah. I guess I do.

Kill a colored kid

And nothing happens -

Save the British Isles and be

Destroyed for being gay -

Or sweetest literary star

In England's firmament -

Decency! The British do like words!

Euphemisms for atrocity.

7-21-13

 

The Paranoid Song

Hello, world! I'm paranoid!

And terrified of death.

I never smile at strangers

Or repartee with clerks

In restaurants and stores

Freely flushing milk -

Rancid milk,

Assumed for the occasion.

I think the people's taste

In music's an assault

Ubiquitous regardless of

What other people like.

I think their taste in movies

And books would be a joke

If sex and death were not the aim

Of everybody's life.

When I was just a boy

Still in my mother's clutches,

Human toilet for the man she married,

I was very friendly,

Gregarious and kind,

And Jesus was the soul of my desire.

7-21-13

 

Breakthrough

Like an alcoholic,
I'm a paranoid -

Grounded in experience

Or only a psychosis?

Perhaps if I decide

That people are benign -

Like washing bugs and bird shit off

The windshield of my car -

My attitude would lighten up,

My poesy improve.

Paranoids believe the world is bad.

Have you seen a thing to contradict it?

7-21-13

 

From Keats

I think perhaps that Keats was right

But only in a book.

Not in life. How foolish. It's absurd.

Truth is beauty, beauty truth.

That's probably emotion.

The Muse and the unconscious sing!

But only in a book.

7-21-13