A Poem About Feeling Crazy

The image of my first grade teacher's head
dripping, and, creating a galaxy of blood on the floor,
made me jump up.
then the same brain that made me wake up
put me back to sleep.

As I close my eyes,
and dream,
of cats slowly clawing their way out of cherry blossoms.

In the morning,
my lover's eyes blink in the still dark room, he asks:
"what were you thinking just now?"
And I can't answer, not really.

The same mind that creates
the most terrifying things
is constantly invested
in documentaries about Papua New Guinea,
and how to design cakes in the shape of hearts.

I live in fear
That one day everyone I know
will find out the things I think about
when I am all alone.

They will conclude all together,
in a great assembly about my state of mind,
that I am actually insane.
I’ll have the pleasure of confirmed suspicions,
as I am put away,
in a 1950's sanatorium
because my madness
is simply too mad for progressive definitions of crazy.

In Papua New Guinea,
some tribes say “"not even a possum walks alone”"
"It is alone that the evil spirits invade the head", they say.

But without loneliness
others will find out about the multitudes of thoughts that scare me at night
And conclude that
obviously
they can't live in the same head
- fluctuating in my intimate ether -
with elves, recipes and flowers
multitudes of flowers that cohabitate with violence,
and the terror of a mind
that simultaneously thinks
of the inherent beauty of human feet
and the sociopolitical consequences of genocide.

So this poem is not a poem it is actually a plea
that other lovely lonely minds might hear
and tell me their contradictions
and their multitudes
because, so often,
my almost constantly lonely mind
concludes that my dark thoughts are the darkest
and my contradictions are surely the most worrying.

I hope that like possums we might live together,
go out for tea and share contradictions anywhere you like.

How does Papua New Guinea sound to you?