Knott

I’m the king of shadows hanging out

With all mankind on the sunny side

of the globe, like a fortune cookie

You find sometime when you feel brilliant

And want to play Smart-Ball –

What did I say when I found out there wasn’t any End,

and no one can say what’s Real?

That God was so smart he invented history –

In his big old bang chair with the dark and greasy arms

He let me hang on to my subway map, bong and interior violence

So I could play Smart-Ball with vigor

Like a fervent mass in a cloud chamber

Somewhere between particle and wave.

We all need heroes, and I quote

The late famous physicist with the wheel-chair and talk-box;

The wiggly lines coming out of him revealed

Space warps in the presence of matter —

And gravity is love between stars.

Length, width, height and time —

That guy had Big Bang shrapnel in the brain.

Such an expert at Smart-Ball!

I thought I’d gained the ability

to at least stand up to myself,

But I had lied to my own diary,

mostly about my psychic ability.

When I read my own red-green-and-yellow aura, I said

My mind is a series of punitive self-images,

And I’m a prisoner of words and grammar.

When I talked I thought I was tap-dancing

How they hide the truth about schizophrenia,

Which is that two heads are better than one,

And being bipolar — might give you one for free!

Best bargains are had choosing a new body-mind

between life-times —

That’s how you win at Smart-Ball

*****