Alienage

the sense of never having fit in,
the memory of anarchy and suffering
and knowledge
(swollen beyond reality)
of the frailty of life

the depression of those who read
the sad and glorious
and little known
history of our globe
(depraved wars and persecutions hiding
in quiet library stacks
waiting to attack the scholar)

the horror and paranoiia
of movie(and news) reality:
the violent and the grotesque,
conspiracies and explosions everywhere,
set to bad acting

comforting drunks
and wretched hang-overs,
toxic decline,
crazy behavior,
the well-lit loneliness of bars,
stiff joints and twelve-step religion,
rooms full of empty bottles,
year after year,
(somehow couldn't moderate
until it was maybe too late)

the old woman who goes asleep
to the television set
(soothed by the form
and ideas
of a lost age)

strange cities at night,
racing traffic
and endless city lights

the bizzarity
of too much disconcerting information,
(usually incomplete or slanted)
alarming our every sense and ethic...
the inability to understand,
the inability to do anything

the sight of happy cars
and head-lights,
at night in winter,
through closed but crooked
dusty blinds

the anarchy of psych wards,
fatigue and
the strong smell of sweat,
doctors with charts,
nurses with pills,
and sometimes RELATIVE security
(institutional relief,
institutional annoyances,
and the realization
that somebody cares,) :
the pleasant feeling
of a terrible situation,
turned just bad

Alienage is like insane optimism
that rises again and again
(oft against good sense,)
and the despair
that can come with it