gator mind

crazy is as crazy does, sanity is immensely strained,
turns and twists of clever thought and pointed bits of pain
a straw-maze of impulse, instinct, and ugly gator-mind
tail-mind, the bit they left in when the model was redesigned
the bit that says do this, do that, hurry-hurry-quick
touch this, run from that, feel-feel-feel, it’s a trick!
hurting mind, frightened mind, shuffled dark and deep inside
curled around the tiny self, with nowhere left to hide
the missing why, the awful who, the stabbing pain of what
sliced away, the where and when, with many a jagged cut
acid pain of complicit how, engraved forever on the soul
world seen through filtered lenses, from the bottom of the hole