Ready to Meet my Maker

As a child I was diagnosed with OCD
Because I couldn't stop myself from trying obsessively
To straighten my bedsheets and make the couch sit perfectly straight in front of the TV screen.

No one could understand that this
Ritual of seeking perfection in seamless sheets and a straight couch
Was actually a desperate crying out
For unity in the form of two loving parents at peace.

You see because my mother and my father did not understand each other
And they fought each other like two tectonic plates
And I was the mountain growing up to be a volcano...ready to blow.
And I did...blow.

My freshman year in college I had my first psychotic break.
They said I was bipolar. They told me about all the great artists
Who had shared my blessings and my curse.
Men and women who had chosen death
Over compromising their own deluded conception of their earthly worth,
Men and women like me who wanted to be free,
And so blinded themselves to the chains of their slavery.
Men and women who had left a legacy.

I bought in.
I went from being "Dan"--cool guy and good friend--
To being " Daniel Senser"--elusive genius and poetic master.
I discarded the world and all the people in it
In exchange for a memorable death and a long afterlife.
I vowed to make my wife my muse or else let my muse be my wife.
I thought I was a god, when really I was like a ship in the middle of a storm with my anchor down,
Stubbornly set on either learning the key to immortality or breaking to pieces in the process.

This is me lifting the anchor.
This is me sailing off 'neath sunny skies
Ready to meet you my friend
And ready to meet my maker.