This is an old one--written in graduate school and submitted to the "Room of One's Own" poetry contents. There's more to the story, of course, but we'll just keep that a little secret.

Going Crazy

1.

I leave to escape fragments

of previous conversations

I cannot swear to ever having.

It is the warm gin that affects me,

I tell myself, or too much poetry

or aftershocks from a single

mescaline overdose. Nothing more.

At the water’s edge I strip

and float into the cold,

fogged-over Pacific, wondering

if a man could drift to the

Cape of Good Hope with nothing

but skin and survive.

2.

Once I looked up from the Equator

and wondered why the sun seemed

no different, why I could not feel

a shift in polar influence.

But I can tell you water dripped

from a faucet, though it spins

with time when it reaches the sink,

vanishes just the same.

3.

What are the visible signs

of going crazy? I have asked

the round-faced postman,

who listens, and, once,

the milkman, who does not.

Tell me, what will I lose

first: my gait? bowel-control?

the simple ability to hold my hand

steady, like this? I think of my

three children, sweat beaded

on their cheeks, watching

my firm grasp loosen digit by

digit until they slip away and fade

into the common American blizzard

of apologies for drunk fathers.

  

4.

I know a man can stay afloat

a lifetime through only occasional,

fluid sweeps of one arm, forcing

the head back and trying

to remember to breathe. So little

is required: it is instinct;

it is years of lessons and learning

to find a way up through clear

water to sunlight. Yet,

I drift in the moonless

tide. This is fine, I say,

and dream of the breathless

life beneath the surface rising

with open mouths to consume

me, to drink from even

the first star.