plastic bag man

john wraps plastic bags around his arms and legs
to protect his skin from the sun, which he has heard
causes cancer
and john can't afford health insurance or a gravestone
and his children stopped talking to him
the fourth time he was arrested for shouting on the street
about the government and all the ways they're fucking us over
and to john, it's just common knowledge, but he shouts anyway
because we are an uncommonly blind society
he wraps plastic bags around his exposed skin to keep the devil out
around his head to keep the demons in
protect his thoughts from those who would use them less productively
he rides his bicycle day in and day out
warning people who know how to read through plastic
armaggedon is coming
armaggedon is coming
only plastic never breaks down and his message is unheard
just ratatat of his bicycle wheels on uneven pavement
and the muttering under his breath
try now
fuckers
let me see you try

see, we have learned to recognize crazy on the street
long before it's reduced to plastic bag limbs
or drunken rage without the influence of alcohol
and i don't know if his name is really john
but i know he's been arrested more times than hospitalized
and hospitalized so often he's too medicated to spell his own name
but he could spell you that moment between the day and night shift
when you can stand by the locked door and smell fresh air
even if it is filtered through medicinal carnage
and relentlessly good intentions
see, we think we know how to recognize crazy on the street
but if you saw me, walking like i had all the time in the world
wearing my future like a suit of armor
could you imagine me waking up screaming in the middle of the night
unable to name my fear, and thus tame it
finally grown up, learned no longer believing in nightmares
just makes them scarier
imagine me screaming because my heart just restarted after self induced silence
and i can't figure out if i'm angry or relieved,
see, we think we know how to recognize crazy
but every girl on the psych ward with me had the same diagnosis
even though i just lay there and cried
and shelly cut herself with plastic silverware
and mary tried to drink the shower to get high
and we were all taking the same medication and john,
he's wrapping plastic bags around every inch of exposed skin
to keep out our judgement like acid rain drying in layers on parking lot pavement
or unprotected flesh, the only danger we acknowledge
is that which threatens our sense of self importance
because the boogyman is wrapped in plastic
we're all reduced to ten years old and screaming in the middle of the night
to prove we still exist
eager to recognize crazy in anything that takes it
one step further
from ourselves.