Madness

What’s imagination but
memory, reshuffled, cut,
and dealt again in new games,
old pictures, new frames?

And memory is imagination,
random bits of information
ordered, filed, labeled fact
by idiot molecules we pack
for storage in the bowl of goo
we trust to guide us, see us through.

And dreams, the ancient mystery,
perennial absurdity
or Morpheus’ lighting fixture,
are they not a simple mixture,
fancy and recall, rehashed each night,
a pinch of joy, a peck of fright?

And what’s madness but a dream
displaced into the dry regime
of daily life, to strew the sheets
on which we’ve scrawled complete
concordances of joys and pains,
to ravish our disordered brains
and leave us sporting in a lake
of fire, fitting us to make
of pterodactyl Noah’s dove?
It has a name. We call it love.