The Lure of Delirium

By Cliff Lake

 

The Lure of Delirium

 

What’s wrong with being sane?

I’ll tell you:

Reality.

There it is before you:

All muddy and stinking of broken promises,

A conglomeration of disappointments,

Most of which are your own fucking fault.

But other clarities swim into view:

Matters not your own,

But heart-rending and ugly:

Starvation just miles down the road,

Hidden perhaps by the more genteel,

So as not to upset the children,

Or their parents.

Sanity allows one to understand,

The vast wrongness of conflict -

Wars propagated by ideology,

Religion,

Greed,

Or born of madness.

What lucidity clamors to comprehend

The assault of innocence

By contorted libido?

Or the wholesale murder

Of scores of people

Committing the sin of shopping?

In the face and fact of such things,

How do I retain

The soundness of my thoughts?

Or does the actuality of being capable

To envision and to speak of such things

Evidence that I too am twisted -

Far beyond hope of recovery?

Or does the very question

Determine that there is hope yet

And that I am only now dipping my toe

Into a dreamscape

That will at least allow me some peace of mind,

Instead seeing just one more tearful episode

Each hour… each day… all the time…

 

Cliff Lake 6/5/2023

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2023

Location: Dalton, MA, USA

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