Monday, May 16, 2016

The origins of what we call madness

















The origins of what we call madness:
the infinite potential, born beautiful
in every being, every balance of heartbeat and mind,
surging in every child.
The same excess that makes us
marvelous and remarkable, creative and kind,
sacred and silly, giving and glorious,
wild and wise and wonderful.
It is born in all of us, differently
and divergingly; the cosmic principle
burns more hotly in some than others.

In thousands of small actions and inactions
of fear, or envy, or pride, or regret, or repression,
the infinity of the individual is bordered,
channeled, corralled, enclosed,
this deemed necessary: to tame the wild
chance of being human, to domesticate
the danger of the child's beauty
(for in the beauty of every child is that plasma of infinity
which can turn the world upside down).
Dams are built, walls and towers constructed
to control the uncontrollable nature within us.
The forests of inspiration are clearcut by the chainsaws of instruction,
the oceans of prophecy are acidified by the hurricanes of profit-seeking,
the visionary deserts are paved with prefabricated virtues.
A system to bind the mind, a mirror of a system that binds the body.
When a storm strikes against the walls, they are reinforced, built higher,
the inner cosmos is confined at all costs,
so hearts and minds become the froth
in the surging waves, beating against their boundaries,
the child the patient the inmate is locked up deeper,
and the ledger of unlived life piles higher.
These are the origins of what we call madness,
surging the same as the stars and the springtime,
feared with reason in our winter of civilization's discontents.


by QMS, May 16, 2016