The trick I perform best
goes like this—
the list of things I don't believe
grows ever longer,
while the words I use
keep shrinking down.
Some nights, my performance dress
is a bodysuit which consists of
the shredded pages
of a homemade thesaurus;
other nights, a DIY tux
made of dollar bills and ticker tape.
And the tight rope lines
I stumble over,
while sideshows of scientists
blow on their slide whistles
and cavalcades of doctors
and lawyers beat drums,
keep wobbling dramatically back
and forth between
the perilously careful
and the trivially absurd:
I don't know;
but I'm sure.