Insane

Mara Lynn Barbee

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Those of the empty heart and limited mind,
Who need to escape from the wicked society
Assigning them names such as "lunatic" and "insane",
End up in the institute for the violent extraordinary.
There science will do its best for them.
Some have no hope, others have no idea
That hiding under the huge umbrella of psychosis
Is anything but the same
As the rest of the society that alienated them.
Most spend their days as if in a cartoon,
Convinced they are on a voyage on the open sea,
Seeing electric purple lightning in cloudy mist,
Fighting a war, playing in a symphony, or working magic.
Some dance through terror and joy,
Expand theories known only to themselves
Or tell of how they are circuits instead of flesh.
They have no idea that the sum total
Of their daily occurrences is observed and used
As material for the doctors' next book.
Their minds are no more connected to the earth plane
Than ours are to dreamworlds during the day.
But all that they experience is every bit as vivid and real
To them as our comparably mundane lives are to us.

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