I have always thought my self a free spirit,
a philosopher mendicant,                               

seeking an alternative,

more substantive, lifestyle.

So many others, however, see my unorthodoxy,

my “spiritual seeking,”

as abnormal and a clear indication of my insanity.

Perhaps I need to pause and to reevaluate my life.

After all, being insane is not something one readily admits.

I guess it’s part of being crazy

to cling to a facade of sanity,

to think oneself normal

and everyone else insane.

 

One thing I am certain of, however.

I haven’t always been crazy.

Wasn’t born crazy.

I think insanity crept up on me,

happened in Vietnam, in the war.

War does that you know, drives people crazy.

Shell shock, battle fatigue, soldier’s heart, PTSD.

All that killing and dying can make anyone crazy.

 

Some survive war quite well, they tell me.

Many even benefit from its virtues.

But war’s effects are not always apparent,

No one escapes war unscathed

In body and in mind.

All war, any war, every war.

Ain’t no virtue in war.

 

I think, of those not driven crazy by war,

many were crazy already.

But theirs was an insanity of a different kind,

a hard kind, an uncaring kind.

I knew people like that.

While I didn’t like them much,

I thought them fortunate,

as killing and dying meant nothing.

In fact, in a perverse way, they enjoyed it,

enjoyed the jazz, the excitement, the power.

They became avenging angels, even god herself,

making decisions of life and death,

but mostly death.

Those crazies hated to see the war end.

For me, the war never ends.

 

Sometimes things work out for the best, though,

as my unorthodoxy, my being crazy,

probably saved my life.

You see, sane people can’t live like this,

in a war that never ends.

Not all crazy people can either.

Guess I was lucky.

Sometimes being crazy helps you cope.

Sometimes, I wish I was crazier than I am.

 

Serious introspection has made clear

the foundations of my unorthodoxy,

the nature of my insanity.

It is a cruel wisdom

Allowing, no better, compelling

A clarity of vision.

I have seen the horror of war,

the futility and the waste.

I have endured the hypocrisy and arrogance 

of the influential and the wealthy,

and have tolerated the ignorance and narrow mindedness

of the compliant and the easily led.

War’s malevolent benefactors,

who pretend and profess their patriotism

with bumper-sticker bravado,

with word but not deed,

intoxicated by war’s hysteria,

from a safe distance.

Appreciative of our sacrifices they claim

as they applaud the impending slaughter,

sanctioning by word, or action, or non-action

sending other men and women

to be killed, and maimed, and driven crazy by war.

 

And when they benefit from the carnage no longer,

their yellow ribbon patriotism and shallow concern

fade quickly to apathy and indifference.

The living refuse of war that returns

are heroes no longer,

but outcasts and derelicts,

and burdens on the economy.

The dead, they mythologize with memorials

and speeches of past and future suffering and loss.

Inspiring and prophetic words

by those who sanction the slaughter

to those who know nothing of sacrifice.

 

I used to try to explain war

to help them understand and to know its horror,

naively believing that war was a deficiency,

of information, understanding, discernment, and vision.

But being crazy has liberated me

allowing me to see that war is not a deficiency at all,

but an excess, of greed, ambition, intolerance, and lust for power.

And we are its instruments, the cannon fodder,

expendable commodities in the ruthless pursuit

of wealth, power, hegemony, and empire.

 

And now, I accept and celebrate my unorthodoxy,

my insanity, as an indictment

of the hypocrites and the arrogant,

of the ignorant and the narrow-minded

for a collective responsibility and guilt

for murder and mayhem,

and crimes against humanity.

And I offer my insanity as a presage

of their future accountability,

to humankind in the courts of history,

and to the god they invoke so often

to sanction and make credible

their sacrilege of war.

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