Scott the Elder

The whole wide world has become his prison.
He spends days commuting between park benches
And nights lightly dozing while wadded up,
Grass-padded perhaps,
Or bed-of-nails pebbly,
Or wrought-iron hard,
Or in a shelter whenever it's stormy.
(The shelters he truly detests above all.)
Libraries offer sanctuary,
But patrons eye him suspiciously;
He's an outcast who carries
His household with him,
A cart piled high with "necessities."
(Only he thinks those scraps are necessities.)
Wisdom weeps out through his senseless blabble;
He must have been brilliant years ago,
Till his mind unraveled--who knows why--
And rewired itself in peculiar ways.
He's now overwhelmed by recurrent bogies,
A feedback loop that strangles logic
And lades his soul with woe upon woe.
He frets about "things" that we rarely consider,
Things like: "What if gravity fails?"
And: "Lottery numbers are Satanists' ciphers."
And: "Dogs speak Swahili when no one's around."
His world is daunting, complex, and frightful,
An inescapable jungle of masks
That leer at him from every angle . . .
Is it any wonder he psychically flees?