awfully real

she realized once something was different

some called it psychosis

some called it enlightenment--

sometimes she wept

sometimes she laughed

sometimes she spoke in many tongues

sometimes she said nothing at all

she was on the edge of the volcano

making her offerings

because one night she dreamed

of a lava sky

flowering, flowing, pouring down

like hot honey, too hot of course

and we disappeared in the blink of an eye

it might have been an asteroid

the one that had been predicted

and maybe now we are underground

somewhere waiting for the new world

she would talk about these things

on her own speaker's corner

over by the 7/11

if only she had put a hat out

and did performance art

instead of being awfully real

and taken away

to chemical straightjacketville.