In Sane Perspective

Because He
sits amid Cedar and Doug Fir,
coffee and cigarette
in one hand,
foolscap and stylus
another, listening
as thoughts drip
from the sky and herons cough
while squirrels scream, watching
the mud-bound frogs few
others notice - you question
His reality.

Because you
are wealthier than He -
Because you
have more power than He -
Because you
have a more formal education than He
Because you
are more obsessed with status than He -
Because you
are more realistic than He -
Because you
have less imagination than He -

You term Bones
unorthodox - an iconoclastic
societal heretic.

You speak of His sanity,
its existence,
or not,
based
on the life you believe
He should desire - the life
He should have
because you think
it is the life
You would wish
to have.

The thought that He,
or any other, might reject
society's sweetly intoxicating
delusions of success
for the bitter-sweet sober
realities of conscious thought -
unfathomable
to the responsible -
labeling Him eclectically
eccentric, deviant - mad.

Semantics perchance - but
what if sanity, normalcy - Yours,
His - like all things, perspective
and naught else?

Working sixty hours a week,
for sixty years in some insignificant
office doing an even more insignificant
job, collecting an equally insignificant
paycheck, a paycheck which is spent
before ever being cut, living
to chase The Dragon, Humanity's
new God, Slave Master -
Credit - Sanity?

And at the end of it all
they will congratulate you, pat you
gently on the back with one hand
whilst the other hands you a gold watch
(retirement check if you are lucky).

From that point there is not even the illusion
of a point as you hide in some forgotten
retirement community desperately
hoping for the dignity to die
before suffering the indignity
of being unable to make it
to the toilet on time -
or worse.

...would you consider
that
to be sane?

_(07-12-2010)