Bill Cody's poem is about the slow, unsettling feeling of losing control over your own life. It begins with madness arriving quietly at night, bringing memory and fear of consequences with it. The speaker talks to "you," which pulls the reader straight into the experience, as if we already know what it feels like.
The middle of the poem turns almost pitiful. "You" screams at the changing sea and waves at the wind, asking for a beautiful sunset, singing rainbows to the moon. These are big, romantic gestures, but they are aimed at things that cannot answer. Meanwhile the seasons keep cycling and "you grow stiffly old."
The ending is small and quietly sad: a "pre-fabricated dance" and humming out of tune. Life seems scripted in advance, and the person is never quite in step with it. The mood is uneasy and wistful, with a sense of helplessness. The title suggests that disorder may be less a political idea than something happening inside the mind.