CAT BOX

CAT BOX

I was the cat
in Schrodinger’s equation

the old school French
nuclear physicists brutal
in assuring me
(quite wrongly) I might
not tunnel out
could not
tunnel through

and then
the 64 million dollar question
whether that decaying
radioactive isotope
definitely
had it in
for me

keen
to pull
the trigger put
me out
of superposition
see
what I would do

but when
box was opened
lid
was lifted
no dead cat, live cat,
cat
turned into
a jack-in-the-box,
but me
a fairly undistinguished person

if person
be the word
if people know these days
what constitutes
a person

beyond
the bone and muscle,
mucus and gristle, spongy
brain
that has
down to a fine art its
finely filtered
sense of
exactitude

yet stuff by the book
cannot wrap
itself
around

and so we must ask
with Beckett’s Malone where
does all
this scenery come from

and
this lucid stuff
that
leaves us
blind

dance of
possibles, probables,
and every dream of being

if you ask me
all boils down to
this
here catbox thinking

of which
I be spokesman spokeswoman
gender
neutral duly
appointed, as here testifying