Madness poem by Dyfed Lloyd Evans

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Madness

by Dyfed Lloyd Evans
My mind is going, terminal decline
Disjointed thoughts jump in, drip out
       A fog that seems to undermine
          Coherent thought — to flout
         A mind that once was razor honed


           Breaking thoughts
                A pattern ought
                             to make some sense,
                                     tear down the fence
           that hems me in.


                         Fractured thought — a fractal gaze,
                                vacant eyes produce — input
                                          that cannot be processed
                                                Synapses fire to no avail,
                                                   All within me seems to fail
                                                      Who am I? Where is this?
                                                                                              What is this place?
                                                                                              Why? Why? Why?……






In these days of desktop publishing and the ubiquitous presence of vast numbers of fonts poetry should be as visually appealing (or challenging) as it is in terms of the language and expression used. The Arabic and Oriental world has always known this and their poems are often as much calligraphic masterpieces as they are profound expressions of the written word. In this case I wanted the way the poem was displayed to reflect its subject matter — actually no mean feat given the limitations of HTML. The web page still has some way before it can truly compete with the printet page in terms of poetic expression, but it's slowly getting there. And, yes, this poem is about the loss of self (hence the diminishing of the lettering in each stanza of the verse).

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