Going Mad

I’ve finally gone completely mad

Yet, my art is never better

I can only imagine

This must have been

What was running through the man’s mind

As the ambulance

Took him away

Years ago

I was living in a rundown motel

On the forgotten side of town

In that part of the city

Nothing stopped for night fall

It was still as lively as mid-day

I woke to the sounds

Of paramedics and police

Their voices outside my room

Their lights flashing through the curtain

The man in the next room

Had spent all night going mad

Breaking the mirror

And porcelain in his bathroom

Into jagged shards

That became the

Glass teeth of his invisible tiger

A tiger that was hungry for his flesh

At first glace

His hands looked like

Stringy mop heads

Soaked in blood

The cops said he was on PCP

They said

He didn’t know what he had done

Then told everyone

To go back to their rooms

That the show was over

Yet, for me, I realized

The script of what had just happened

Still needed to be written

Even if all parts had been

Successfully acted out

I was 18

And had seen more than most

At my young age

I knew I had to get what was now

In my mind out on paper

On paper and out of my mind

I had not taken a writing course

I had no college degree

Just a need to get all that I’ve seen

And continued to see

Out on paper to make sense

Of our sometimes senseless world

To stop and look for the things

Most walk right by

As one man went mad

I picked up my pen and never looked back