So, You've Asked Me What It's like to be Manic

A Poem by furticus

so many don't know what it's like

So, You’ve Asked Me What It’s Like to Be Manic

Robbie Furtwangler

I can sum it all up in three sentences:

It’s life alive, life untapped, with a tremendous electro-magnetic fuel, burning in your mind like a sweet memory that caramelized and you have to eat it with real sensitive teeth on your birthday at a strip club that later gets busted, and you go to jail for three days, and your dog gets into some laxative while you’re away and you just got new carpeting.

It’s Robin Williams, 1970’s HBO all jacked up on something special, somebody who flies around the stage, the afro’d audience in awe, and the cameras for such a long time and brings you from here to there, from darkness to light, to amusing, intriguing, alarming, funny as funk, to oh my god, to gee whiz, to why is he sweating like a pregnant pig: singing, dancing, prancing, romancing, chancing, inflating, debating, degrading, elating, baiting, waiting, fainting? until it all just stops when he just bows and waves, and makes you smile with his smile, which you have once again seen in a different way.

That kind of energy and emotion, passion and persuasion surging through your mind and body is more energizing, more satisfying, and even funnier than watching it; believe me I know, but I also know that it doesn’t always end in applause.