An Extra Helping

By Andrew R. Duckworth

Normal feels like yesterday,
Like two years ago,
Like a decade ago.
Chaos is a street sweeper,
Sweeping clean the stains of order.
Whose order?
Who’s order?
We chose the symphonies of chaos
Over the sweet hymns of order
And normal was something unsure of,
Something we had to question.
Normal was vile,
Normal was destructive,
Normal was all too normal.
Chaos was normality’s antidote,
A wiping away of order.
We purchased the chaos on TV,
We embraced the chaos advertised,
We knelt at the altar of chaos
Until normality seemed as faint
As a distant dream,
A high we wished to chase.
But normal was no longer welcome
In a place so bent on abnormal,
In a place so asymmetrical,
Never satisfied,
Always craving an extra helping of chaos,
As we ask ourselves why we’re so unhappy.