*****

Recorded Reading (4:38): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pcqvnn2cyqnnbbu0icqf5/What-s-Wrong-With-You.mp3?rlkey=ggy68ks6nath5vvljlzsgjk0j&st=hjum6er4&dl=0

*****

What’s Wrong With You?

By and large we go around
With massive disinterest ~
In callused carelessness abound
When we think we might be blessed

Someone else’s story by
All our tricks come into play
As with our whole heart we try
To push that soul away

It might harm our digestion
Or complacency, it’s true ~
But we do ask one question:
“What is Wrong With You?”

How often do we hear somebody
Praising someone any more?
But certainly we do make free
In showing that someone the door

It’s gotten so egregious
In manifest fact
Our televisions tell us all
How we ought to act

And that does not include
(I heave an incredulous sigh)
Any attitude
Allows us even meet the eye

Of anyone we feel might want
Anything we’ve got
As we our sterile strip malls haunt
For pleasure in what may be bought

Where we know this or that will be
In its proper section
And clear signage we can see
Guaranteeing its perfection

Because it looks as closely as
It’s possible to look
Like every other item was
Off the same shelf took

That’s how we want our people, now,
Carbon copies of each other ~
Ludicrous to poets how
Any diff’rence makes us shudder

One wrinkle, or an errant thread
Is enough to cancel worth
Never mind ones clothes or head
Sprinkled with a little earth

For you must be most certainly
The weirdest person far around
If you sit beneath a tree
Upon the friendly ground

Have you an opinion
Opposite of one
Which I hold? Then, deluded son,
Evaluate you I’ve begun

With regard to denigrating
Your compromised sanity
For that subject you’re relating
Unfamiliar is to me

Though the wisdoms of the ages
Thousands of years gathering
Bright illuminate the pages
Whereupon those wisdoms sing

If you speak of any
Of them in the now and here
Not only won’t you earn a penny
You’ll have our small minds to fear

Who would rather put you down
Shut you off, refuse to hear
Call you idiot and clown
And yet worse ~ dangerous, my dear!

There was, and not so long ago,
A more reasonable day
When we let people freely grow
In their individ’ual way

In that day, we didn’t hold
Uniquenesses as crazy
When of them to each other told:
Industrious or lazy,

Tending to the spiritual,
Tending to mundane ~
Just circumstances factual
This one humble, that one vain

This one reads your tea leaves
That one can for water seek
None of them themselves deceives
They have authority to speak

About a charge as serious
As act’ual sanity
Unless one were delirious
Talked to folks one couldn’t see

DaVinci donned his winter “do”
Early in the season
Sewing himself it into
No one’s nose relievin’

And Benjamin Franklin made
Himself quite naked every day
Seated near a window stayed
Felt his health nourished in that way

Even Jesus Christ as well
Whom we hold in careful awe
Clearly doth the Bible tell
Severally broke the law

It’s one thing for a prophet
At home to live sans honor
And quite another if she get
Humiliation heaped upon her

I’d be fascinated
To hear something I don’t know
From you ~ that’s how created
Insights are by which mine grow

But if I bring a subject up
With which you’re unacquainted
You’re absolutely flummoxed, yup ~
Last century, you fainted!

We have a more convenient
Method in the modern day:
Just tag “insanity” anent
Its name, and put it far away

*****

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