Schizoaffecting

My shoelaces are too long - replacements,
and my pants don't fit well
as I now remember this guy, like a sour preacher,
who wore essentially a black uniform-
polyester pants, ankle high boots-
every day and a certain something about him,
beyond his pan-Asian prejudice,
that signified evil and wrong-headedness.

I guess I should wear the black pajamas of the Viet Cong.

Because I am a bad dresser
does not mean that I am a bad man,
there is more to it than that,
maybe a smell or an aura that only
dogs and people on drugs can detect.

You know it when it's there. Hard to miss.

Today I listened to a man whose experience
can only be described as
everything at once
all the time.

He doesn't get a lot of rest,
and there's nothing funny about it
at all.

He's aware of my incongruous laces,
but he has bigger fish to fry.

Today I saw another person on crack
holding his body in a strange pose
who heard my thoughts and saw me first.

We are, all three, in spiritual darkness
and thankfully, I guess,
I can only see about a foot
in front of my face.

The man who perceives it all at once
is just out of jail for the eighth time today.
He tells me he knows the darkness in his consciousness
and he keeps it there, tightly confined in his skull,
never allowing it to infect his heart.