By Mather Schneider
Sometimes intelligence
is a place with no oxygen
like a man laughing so hard
he can’t breathe.
Nobody knows how we
are built to live, why we go
bat-crazy over every
little thing, how it all
got warped and goes
on warping, hour by hour,
or what humor means
when your life is a maze
with a center of pain
and your soul is a moth-
eaten substitute for immortality.
Laugh that the torment felt
is not a torment meant
but an accident.
Laugh that our lives are
barely a moment
to the tamarind
sun.
