You know how when you walk down the street
You can hear the whispers about everyone else on that street

That the frail, sallow faced homeless man with the rattling tin can
That man whose moaning and screeching weakly to himself can only mean bad things

Ought be locked away; shoved into a loony bin
Ought to be rattling his skull against a padded wall instead of a can

Well they all say he must have lost his marbles somehow
Well they must have fallen from his ears like gumballs from a metal chute

As if sanity is just a series of tiny glass ***** that you could lose beneath your bed
As if the memories and morality of some demented women are just collecting dust somewhere

But I doubt that sanity should be perceived in that fashion
But I doubt that our mental stability isn’t more like one massive marble

All thick and glassy but crusted in spatters of glitter
All shiny and glimmering with the memories of some tortured soul

Rocking back and forth against their skulls and chipping away their ability to cope
Rocking back and forth the way they do in the fetal position; alone in their bedrooms

Breaking off tinsel-y bits of their childhood, their personality, their purpose
Breaking off a kaleidoscope chunk of their minds

Perhaps we don't ‘lose’ our marbles at all
Perhaps they just crumble away