I
do not have a beautiful mind
I do not
have a beautiful mind.
I did not know until recently that beauty
Is yet
another discipline where
my mind can fail.
My mind is made of parts I found
behind the ARCO station on El Camino.
When I bring it in for service they tell me
my emissions are suspicious.
When I take it to the dealer
the dealer refuses to deal.
I catch it staring at unfamiliar acronyms
thinking these are new names for God.
It aspires to be a soul
but it is too noisy.
Often it thinks it is crazy or the world
is crazy, or that
its hair is too long.
It has to remind itself it has no hair.
It assigns a history to every face
but it cannot put a face on history.
It has a tentative contract with the dark
which sends it stories out
of nowhere,
accompanied by fumes.
It has been married 152 million times
but it has divorced only itself.
It only
listens when I sing.
It always
interrupts me when I cry.
Sometimes it goes out without shaving.
My mind will pose for a photograph
when it is supposed to be taking pictures.
It likes to pose nude even though it is wrinkled
and past middle age.
Its state bird is a chained cattle gate on a
gravel road. Its
mascot is
a fluttering bat.
Someone gave it an alphabet but it forgot
where it ends.
They gave it numbers
and it gives back time.
They gave it
mercy and it gives back light.
It only listens when I sing.
Terry Adams
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