The Wackness (i watched a not so fantastic movie with this title...)

On a scale of one to wack
how would you rate
this? Would you take back

whatever you took?
What did you take,
anyway, to make life whack

you off from where you sat?
What makes life so irate--
or perhaps you don't watch your back

enough. That's what's wack:
no self-protection, no real pace
of things, and then everything spreads like an influenza that

can't simply put itself back
to where it should be. Here's the truth: no place
for the hope of things when gears of machines place tacks

under your feet. It's a fact
that nations, rising like yeast, face
each other: noses close together as face to breath, flat

and unflinching; that
the loss of a child means another race
towards more hands balled skyward and that

is where we find ourselves: wrapped
in a chrysalis, ominous, and hate
is a warm pie we eat on cream-colored place-mats.

You always look at
the dopeness, and, although I ignored it and ate
my fair share of bliss, it's just that

sometimes it--whatever it is--decides to drive into my head, a pick ax.
On the wackness scale, what's it rate?
You can tell me. From one to wack.