THE ARCHETYPE OF THE MAD SCIENTIST


Was that the moon you thought

as the double doors swung

shut & the host dropped

your name across the room?


Pink flowers the kitchen

like a grand catastrophe

of champagne. Ours

is the world without retribution.


The guest of honor wants a word

with you & I can’t stop

thinking about ovulation, or

about nuclear physics. Is it too much


to ask for a sign? I mean

everything I think & each detail

is piling against the mauve

walls like dust on a large glass. It’s always


busy these days, as night

erodes into a series of assembly

instructions—unknown languages,

folds, and badly drawn pictographs.


It seems like only yesterday I ate

like I was starved and peed like

I was drunk all the time. Neutrinos

were just a phone call


away. So close we were

to discovering the nature

of faithlessness & now

here we are, drunk all the time—


bootlegging pirate copies of the long lost

Hollywood blowout. You know, the one

with that girl & her designer

aura. The one in that poem


about the starving children

of Bimigi & the mad scientist

who tried too hard, who

only succeeded in establishing


the archetype of the mad scientist.