pissing on potted plants

when you're insane, is everything you do insane?
or just some of the stuff.
getting up in the morning and putting on your clothes.
is that insane? what if you get up in the morning
and put on your clothes when all you really feel
like doing is dying and you don't REALLY care if you get out
of bed or not, but you just do it, out of habit?
running laps.
what if you're insane and you're running laps?
pretty ordinary. probably not an insane act.
brushing your teeth.
what if you brush your teeth so hard your
gums bleed and then you keep on brushing and
brushing and brushing and watching the
blood drip from your mouth and still
you keep on brushing? harder and harder. and
harder.
when you're insane, is everything you do insane?
walking to work.
what if it's only 4 blocks to where you work?
not too insane to walk the 4 blocks.
what if it's 4 miles?
well....  what if it's 10 miles? and you
walk to work? and it's pouring rain.
hmmmmm.
so this guy is totally insane, diagnosed
and the whole bit, and
he makes the most beautiful watercolor
pictures you could imagine, and today
they sell for big money. yet this
same guy used to swallow anything
he could get down his throat, including
bits of pens and pencils broken into
sharp jagged pieces.
since he was insane, was everything
he did insane?
how about going into the store and
buying the tubes of watercolors
and calmly paying and walking out?
and then going home and before
he got down to work
he went out on the beach
and stripped naked and swam
in the water and then
climbed out and lay down
on the beach where he masturbated for
about an hour
and then he got down to working
on his watercolors.
if you're insane, is everything
you do insane?
dining by candlelight in
a fancy restaurant with a friend, drinking
lots of wine, banishing the ache
for a while.
just a while, though,
just a while.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem appeared in FUCK!, Volume 13, Number 5, May 2010.)