Seeing Things Otherwise



I remember one time someone said
This is not poetry at all
The author must be out of his head
Obsessively-compulsively

Just mental illness as I recall
"Nursery-rhyming madman" he
Called me and warned everyone away

Being too otherwise to be
More than an outsider for those who
Ought he thought to oppose me too
Seeing me rise he thought I should fall

Having already fallen through
A crack back then in society
Being otherwise the hard way

Taken aback by "stacked-up rhymes" and
Jacked-up crimes against what he thought
Was poetry he thought this was not
But had to be madness instead

Bothered by the otherwise like me
I think he failed to understand
The Lancean specificity

But here I am and he is dead
Over on the other side they say
Being otherwise anyway
Seeing things otherwise finally



Steven Curtis Lance