When the flame burns bright
Too close to the flame
One gets burned
Too smart to know
Too dumb to realize
Insecurities, fucked both ways
The follies of a youthful mind spinning
Too left or too right
The tangle tangents diverged
In art, in philosophy, and in religiosity
My tangled tangents converged
In each, a tangent point was made
Too skewed to be appreciated
Too skewed to be denied
On the outside looking in
One foot in, speaking out
My duplicity, a paradox
Too dumb to know
Yet smart I wrote
My tangents touched ideals
Idealizations deconstructed
All at once,
There I was
Neither here nor there
Both, in and out
Riding tides of time
Writing tangents
In due time
In music ,I saw the colored notes
The notes in turn
A tangled story told
In canvass pigment and sculpted clay
The last minute dissertation played
In words, I worried
In clay I played
In pigment I displayed

When the flame burns bright
Too close to the flame
One gets burned
Too smart to know
Too dumb to realize
Insecurities, fucked both ways
The follies of a youthful mind spinning
Too left or too right
The tangle tangents diverged
In art, in philosophy, and in religiosity
My tangled tangents converged

In Illusions of a passion burning
Left my creativity
A path of learning tangents tangled
To listen to the tangents so confused
Originally weeded from as not worthy of
Health care, now my own bane again

When the flame burns bright
Too close to the flame
One gets burned
Too smart to know
Too dumb to realize
Insecurities, fucked both ways
The follies of a youthful mind spinning

Disowned and disavowed
The creative path I did choose
In family support did return to the healing arts
Turned aside my creative side
Till I found, in confusion 's sound
Once again the colored rhythmic notes
In insanity, found a vision of my own sanity
In the babel, understood all too well
Of being on the outside looking in
the anxiety
The loneliness
The ultimate depressive confusion
Of being there, and not being there
The paradox of reality
The paradox of dementia land

So just where do I fit in?
Dementia land so clear to me
When reality burns me so
Each confused statement
A lovely colored note of elder reality
That I hear so perfectly
But fail to get others to hear
The symphonic dysphagia
The symphonic body language
To each a life of brilliance
Burning out brightly before my eyes
Tho not seen by those around
Who, in reality, really should understand

Some days are dark and gray to me
when, alone, I hear the the demented demands
Unable to simplify, simplicity itself
Expected, once before
In reality, did demand
That my co-workers have an understanding
Of the language of demented confusion
Just to find myself unemployed
Re-employed in my own hell

Perhaps, I understood too well
Perhaps, I expected too much of others
Perhaps , I understood the unexplainable
Perhaps, I burnt my own self

When the flame burns bright
Too close to the flame
One gets burned
Too smart to know
Too dumb to realize
Insecurities, fucked both ways
The follies of a youthful mind spinning
Too left or too right
The tangle tangents diverged
In art, in philosophy, and in religiosity
My tangled tangents converged
In each, a tangent point was made

Do I now wave the white flag of of defeat?
When once I did demand excellence in care
Am now lucky to find 1 who gives a damn
Did I burn myself in my own flame?
When the flame burns bright
Too close to the flame
One gets burned
Too smart to know
Too dumb to realize

When the flame burns bright
One is blinded by the light
Or burnt by the flame
A flame of my own making