I've read far too much psychiatry -
Now knowing from ear to there
Many mysterious processes
That make one's mind blink -
Acute chemical reactions,
Therapeutic medications...
But academic texts
In their dryness
Seem to lose
Life's realness,
Why we think
As we do.
That *****
That comes loose
To throw one off course
Could not be all chemistry.
So academically written are words
To those authors who don't live them.
I'd rather imagine some error of cooking -
That tarragon substituted for basil
Or marjoram instead of sage
Gave that strange taste
To the sauce of my life
That salt could not
Cover over.
A wife
Imbalanced
Wasn't my choice
As young lovers married.
Yet in time I heard the voice
Mimicking demons, evil in cycles.
Excused and forgiven as nature's vice
At first  - then when wrath affected children...
A man can only accept his own scars
As the consequences of his living,
Entered into wide-eyed, willing.
By knife's nicks I've survived,
Callused skin is tougher.
But to save the tender
I think I'll give up
Cooking.

Insanity isn't contagious
As go diseases,
But as butter
It does
Spread