One hand drawing the other, both right,
both incomplete.  Something like the uroboros,
but no eating involved and nothing
like my bank account, which might
actually be a quantifiable thing
if the Universe wasn’t expanding, but porous.

I’d be more efficient if I could
smoke with my right hand, he must have been —
that’s what his left hand was doing…
Not fading… I don’t know.  What I would
like to know is why it’s a quantum sin
to know both where you are and where you’re going?

Maybe he was saying you’re a mirror
to your actions…?  Nah!  No wonder the hands
are both right and three-dimensional,
at least to the eye.  If we can infer
three of them from two then how do we add?
No less multiply?  And the werewithal

of a priest to speak of salvation?
They get one from three, and I get
a rubber check while Heisenberg
laughs on his way to the occassional
bank, and Escher considers a marmoset
teaching physics and living in the suburbs!

If we can prove, by math, that a black hole smaller
than a quark but heavier than the sun
can exist then shouldn’t we be able
to market it as some new garbage disposal?
Why do we have to cast just one
reflection, as he suggests, instead of a stable

of forms, mutually exclusive… Freudian even!
One reading in the dark while another
plays softball on the weekends with the guys
from work.  Quantum physics, cooking cajun
and mall-bashing could all be related to weather
forecasts.  It all depends on the shape of your eye.

Mom once said that schizophrenia what like cooking:
You never knew what you had until you tasted it.

——————————————————————-

Written in the spring of 1991, revised in small ways ever since, including today.  This is one I really think needs to be recited, rather than read, as the character can’t come off the page until you do.

That’s how it worked for me, and why I refused to tame it, despite criticism to the contrary.   Forcing the rhyme scheme and stanza length was all the taming this needed.

And, while I disagree with the speaker now (and I’m not sure I ever did… caffeine can play real havoc with you if you’re not careful), at times I’m almost convinced by his argument, such as it is.  When my mom read this she asked me if she ever said that…. sadly, she hadn’t.

Then again, this ain’t really me talking either.