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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Being Mad

I am on the verge of being mad.
Making up my world,
refusing to acknowledge gears
and hard shouts,
waking up to the harness of my duties,
obeying the rules,
selling the air and water,
and taxing the change in my pocket.
Being mad has advantages.
There is nothing more useless
than the face of a puppy,
the smile of a child,
a girl trailing fingers
through the sun in her hair.

Being mad they are more priceless
than gold.
They are the sleep and wakefulness
of a clear heart.
I dare the sky to fall,
and it laughs and falls,
and covers everything with ink at night,
rainbows at noon.
The sky is a robe of miracles.
The earth has big eyes called volcanoes.
Mountains are the veins of old age,
rivers, the streams of its eternal youth.

Am I not compos mentis
not to be cruel?
I do not count and wager,
or lose myself arguments.
I am soft as a raisin,
and doorways are invitations.
Sanity is a straight road
where people get lost.
Miracles are useless if you are not mad.
I’d rather be mad
and go off to work,
listening to voices in the rain,
the roar of hurricanes
in my heart.

Published inIndex of all Poems