Sanity is hard to find
“As sick as sick can be,” my friend tells me in the car
“The moment I get close, I can see how weird they are.”
We re-read my mother’s letter about how hard to be
the seventh child, with older sisters’ ballroom celebrity
As her eldest daughter, she tells me I “don’t deserve” a bar
A friend remembers one beau—smacking of normality
telling her that aliens like couch radioactivity
He was seriously married with kids and sticky-lolly jar
As sick as sick can be
We tell each other, to care-fully know, we must watch afar
for blamers, shamers, false love-claimers greeting on the tar
We look for listeners and real smiles—as selectivity
But still fall for our fathers—badly-wired electricity
Begin again, we grin again, re-cast our own blown star
As sick as sick can be
And doing things alone do I feel more authenticity?
Or do I swim congenitally, wearing neck-to-knee?
I shiver under bedclothes but leave the door ajar
As sick as sick can be
He does not think that half-and-half is to cook and char
I recognize some jiggly-bits but not the whole ha ha
Mirror-dancing, “You’re my baby”, looking back at me
At least I know that I am crazy, unlike most humanity
As sick as sick can be