Is madness, insanity, genetic?
Often that’s true. Bent, shriveled chromosomes
And unsparked synapses prove prophetic,
Produce certain intellectual gnomes.
Can’t be helped—nature’s often cruelly rude.
But another kind of madness afflicts
The mind, the heart, fingers, even toes—crude
Ineptitude and ignorance constrict
All humanity. Tempers explode, irked
Past all reason, while rule-bound blank-eyed clerks
Fumble to find the Form that can correct
A problem, so minor, so perfectly
Simplistic that any child could dictate
A solution, while bureaucrats gyrate.
(1/20/11)