A Sense of Discomfort

[dukealien]

A Sense of Discomfort


man spits on the cringing world
he's seen nothing he can't understand
which has made him madder 
than what his mother made him
putting him to bed
to a story of time's turning hand
molesting his mind insane
like asking a child questions
to answers he already knows

I'm not a polished writer of free verse, so bear with me, please.

First, the complete absence of punctuation and capitalization is bracing, consistent, and allows the reader full scope for ambiguous interpretation and variant readings as to pauses and rhythm.  I would almost suggest making the title all lower-case as well.

If there's a place for punctuation, it would be at the end of L7 (after "insane") - perhaps an em dash (which seems fashionable at the moment on this site, too) to set off the concluding simile.

The overall theme - knowing all the answers makes you crazy - is original (in my experience), and well expressed.

(I first tried to force the interpreation into my own hobby-horse about scientists messing with data to confirm their theories, but it's really not there - which shows, first, that there's room for interpretation but, second, that the actual message is strong enough to overcome seriously wrong ones.)

Concluding suggestion:  perhaps "what" on L4 could be "how" or "the way," though congratulations are in order for restricting use of "the" to one, and in a good place for it (L1).  I trip over "what" a bit there, meaning-wise.

Overall, quite effective.  Thanks for posting!