Day 5: VERY SILLY; VERY SERIOUS

DEADLY DELIRIUM

Delirium occasionally strikes my somber self just past my usual
bedtime. My sides heave, I lose my breath
to wheezing guffaws, one spasm of giddiness leading to the next, out of control, fearing
I will pee my pants, laughing until I cry, over nothing, nothing. I can’t remember
a single thing that made me lose it like this.

Is it the unseen underground effect of earthquake plates shifting
tsunami meltdowns of way too many SOMETHINGS that
stupefied
my brain and body and being, no, my breath,
saturated
radioactively by invisible particles,
charged
by death on the other side of the planet, as all day I am,
blasted
long and hard from NPR and PBS and MoveOn, I am,
raped
women in eastern Congo,
bombed
babies in Libya,
dissolved
polar ice caps, and
proliferated
genetically modified corn,
seeded
right here where I live by Contantine, who like the emperor of old,
capitalized

the world,
weeded
out farmers back to Japan where, I
glowed
toxic, a waste, remembered, as
cultivated
by eighteen generations of farmers, now
abandoned
to legislatures who leave over health, immigration and labor, who
excluded
millions of children left behind, so as to be forcibly
improved
overnight in a quantifiable American
dreamed
best way in the world?

Delirium occasionally strikes my somber self just past my usual
bedtime. My sides heave, I lose my breath
to wheezing guffaws, one spasm of giddiness leading to the next, out of control, fearing
I will pee my pants, laughing until I cry, over nothing, nothing. I can’t remember
a single thing that made me lose it like this.

Wish I could remember
a single thing that allows me lose it like this, weeping, too,
grounded
between silly and somber
in solid
just
life.