At that ephemeral place of knowing where only drug trippers, mystics, and a few physicists occasionally visit
Where LSD, Jesus Christ, and quantum theory all meet to agree
As the bass beats coming from the speakers at night teach me the same lesson as the poetry handbook I read at the laundromat in the morning
The music stops but I keep dancing
Because even when the businessman walks to work his steps land on the sidewalk in a rhythm
As thousands of office workers in skyscrapers type out a symphony on their keyboards
As I try to figure out the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables even though I'm tone deaf
On drugs it's easy to see that it's all the same
Me and the singer-songwriter on stage seem to be speaking the same language
I look at the faces of other people in the crowd and realize that we're not so different
But then I get sober again and read what I wrote and it's not as good as I thought it was when I was still tripping
So I keep tripping to get back to that place where it all intersects
Where I'll meet the mystic who might heal me
And quantum theory will still make sense even when I get sober again
So I can finally write a poem about that place
This is not that poem