Blunt - 05/18/13

What's a poem ever going to say that you would want to hear, that you would perk up to, that you would wrap in a napkin and slip out of the restaurant to examine later, dainty words on satin or hasty verse on paper, on trash, on the back of a checklist of important things I ran from for fear of failure.  For fear of success?  Words I threw out the back of my mind because they could never be answered or threw out my lips because any more thoughts would only have made them worse.  Blunt words like broken plastic on soft flesh, startling, stinging, strange.  Yet I can't imagine why that metaphor must be the one to come to mind when, I swear, I'm health and happy and better, though even more so with you.  Because I don't need any more heart-broken albums on repeat, but I downloaded all the ones you sent me to, every song you said you loved, but not because you loved them, not because I loved them either, but because it worked out that we both did.  Because you listen to the songs I loved and heard the magic pluck of strings and tap of cymbals with the s's of the lyrics and the poetry lamented to dark symphonies.  Because each thought in your head is alone worthy of love and all of them woven together as your mind, as your soul, well, damn, where do I even begin to begin to beg each readers and listener to let their heart swell with each soft sentence that rambles from your lips and blush when they realize it's sly compliments that they should be scared they can't live up to but aren't because, hell, just because you wouldn't lie to them, now would you?  Because brainy is the new sexy and book recommendations are the new flirtation and song lyrics are monologues that fit my thoughts too perfectly to be sung.  Because you sing, little snip-its of old songs and sad songs and love songs.  Because you watch sad movies and I swear that I don't but I also swear that I'm Vulcan and I think you and I can both guess how much you can trust my swears but who cares?  Because in a few minutes I'll have thought of something a thousand times better to say, the right moves, the right song in the background, the right hand gestures and heaves of my shoulders.  Because it will be too late, so I might as well be blunt.

Because you make me want to write poems, which has never been a good thing before.

She Never Put Her Heels On - 04/26/13

The universe
has runs in her stockings
the origins of which
we have been trying
to describe
since Copernicus
first looked to
the skies.

Give It To Me Straight - 04/07/13

The Venn Diagram
of what I'm saying
and what I'm thinking
is two circles
separated by
several feet of





emptiness.

Second Things - 03/13/13

The second thing I think

when I pick up a pair of scissors

is what I'm going to do with them:

cut paper,

remove price tags,

free hair.

The second thing I think

when I look out over a bridge

is how beautiful the water is.

The second thing I think

when I see a piece of rope

Okay, that's not a good example.

I haven't seen any rope in some time

and I don't know what the second thing I'd think

would be if I did.

What do normal people think

when they see rope?

The second thing I think 

when I pick up my razor in the morning

is where I'll be shaving.

I'm waiting for the day

when the second things I think

will be the first things I think

and the first things I think

won't even cross my mind

because those scissors don't cross

my flesh anymore,

so why do those thoughts

still fall past my eyes

and drown heart beats

in nerves;

so why do those thoughts

still linger,

hung from the rafters

of old habits,

the way I still skip meals

not on purpose, 

but because I honestly forget,

patterns ingrained no longer in my veins

but parts of me

still think they are.

Still Don't Know Linear Algebra - 03/09/13

If meaning is a vector,
can I write poetry with tensors
with an invariant
that grapples at
some object truth
that I have turned away from?

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe - 03/04/13

I built a world
on observations of stars
running backwards,
missing pieces,
imaginary numbers,
and infinite energies
in all the wrong places.

So when the i's
fell into possibilities,
as probabilities somewhere,
as certainties some times,
gentle lines fell along data points
and familiar constants
marketed security as truth,
which I bought in
tera electron volts.

Calculators away,
pens down, papers over,
but left behind
were a pile of dots and squiggles
and my imagination
to build universes
from the scraps of broken lives.

Haylie Says Things And I Listen - 03/03/13

When she described me to her friends,
she said that I had eyes that looked very



far


away, but dressed like I knew
exactly where I was.

Photon - 02/01/13

I feel like a photon,
light:
massless,
unconstrained,
free.

Yet full:
infinite,
stable,
existing across all time
and no space,
everywhere and when.

I feel like a photon:
light and full.

As I wander,
I am going
nowhere and anywhere,
with all the time
in my frame.

If I could feel
each separate atom
I am comprised of,
would I feel
me?

But I do not feel
in Newtonian systems
but as strings of events:
a bend in the knuckle
to a wrinkle in the finger,
to a twitch in the forearm,
to a soreness in the shoulders,
to a stiffness in the neck,
to a freedom in the mind.

I feel me
all at once.
Like a photon.

Light and full.

Wish Granted - 01/30/13

Some  sensual, level woman,
leaning calmly against an aqua bus stop sign,
brilliant aubern hair contrasting,
taking a long, thoughtful look
at the twists and turns of the road,
looked at me
as I paused
and looked at her

and we both said,
"Hello."

Avidya - 01/18/13

Slowly, my child,

must you walk upon this Earth,

and slowly, my child,

you must look,

for your eyes see but

the tiny fraction of the spectrum

that the universe

could fit inside your book.

Slowly must you examine

all that lies before you,

slowly must you observe each turn,

slowly must you analyze

the illusion that you see,

slowly, my child, must you learn.

Slowly, my child,

must you listen to the waves

at frequencies

that say barely anything at all,

while the universe, my dear,

ranges far beyond your ears,

from the infinite to the infinitesimal.

Inaccurate Memories of Train Rides and Birthdays - 12/19/12

Unraveling green thread,

tossed blankets

of mossy fabrics,

the oozing motion

of light blue paint

falling on bubbles sheets

falling on the clear edge

of the canvas.

Bandits and robbers

won't take my candy,

only Great Grandma's laughs

I think.

I remember green,

blue,

brown.

Trees, sky, dirt.

Where did the robbers come from?

And the arrhythmia?

And the bumper stickers?

And the stillborns?

And the cantaloupes

in your daughters tubes?

More importantly,

where did all the holidays go

when no one was dying

to celebrate them?

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - 11/28/12

(Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta!)

You say that you don't want to waste your time
On things you'll never use in life
Like me
And the equation that describes
The ratio between a hypotenuse
And its adjacent side

But I've derived another equation
To show that this relation
-ship ain't changing,
That our derivative is undefined
At every single point in time

So tell my electron orbitals
Exactly how inadmissible
Are Legendre and Bessel?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
You'll never know oh, oh, oh, oh
How far I'll go oh, oh, oh, oh
oh-oh-oh-oh, OH!
Because you're stuck on position
So momentum has gone missing
The only thing that you'll be kissing
Is my uncertainty goodbye

The electro-magnetic spectrum
Can account for your deflection
Einstein knows how to describe
The speed at which you're telling lies
Heisenberg wouldn't be concerned
With the indeterminism in every word
That's coming from your direction
At 333 meters per second

I don't care how you insist
Because you're a third derivative
So you can bet that you won't see me
As n approaches infinity
I'm rocking off to divergence
Unconstrained by your convergence
Your factorials just weren't worth it

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
You'll never know oh, oh, oh, oh
How far I'll go oh, oh, oh, oh
oh-oh-oh-oh, OH!
Because you made the wrong calculations
At every step of this derivation
And found only the equation
Of my velocity goodbye

I'm so done with this discontinuity
Gibbs phenomenon even at infinity
You're the zero in the denominator
Time-dependence in a Hamiltonian operator
But once the boundary condition's imposed
Out of my equations you'll go

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
You'll never know oh, oh, oh, oh
How far I'll go oh, oh, oh, oh
oh-oh-oh-oh, OH!
Because you're stuck on position
So momentum has gone missing
The only thing that you'll be kissing
Is my uncertainty goodbye

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
You'll never know oh, oh, oh, oh
How far I'll go oh, oh, oh, oh
oh-oh-oh-oh, OH!
Because you made the wrong calculations
At every step of this derivation
And found only the equation
Of my velocity goodbye

You'll never know
You'll never know
You'll never know, oh-oh-oh-oh, OH!

The City/My Soul - 11/25/12

I can hear my heart beat
in the city at night,
the rush of wind
over the river
is the pulse of my blood;
the clang of metals
in the distant industrial area,
the opening and closing
of ventricles;
the hum of traffic,
busy capillaries.

I can see my mind running
in the city at night,
radio towers twinkling
are my neurons firing;
satellites flying and falling,
thoughts conflicting;
the rippled water
reflecting distant images
chiaroscuro,
sums up
my being.

Writer's Block - 11/25/12

The night could give
so much more inspiration
could my fingers bare
the cold.

The Photoelectric Effect - 11/25/12

I cleaned out my idea books

to make room for textbooks,

set down my quantum books

to fiddle with computer programs,

rid my mind of poetry

to welcome in philosophy,

turned away from all I felt

until I thought no more.

But the stars don't care

how you interpret

quantum mechanics

or what images

you make with them

or how you came to be,

for they are

your creator,

the still image

of their past lives

making its way to you,

slowly.

I turn away and the light

cannot be said to shine.

When I do not write about them,

they do not wait,

yet are still where I left them

when I come to my senses,

turn back around

and see.

The city lights are star,

fallen on the ground,

and the path I take to see them,

a black hole's event horizon,

dangerous and dark,

Nine pm out on the bluff,

with cold stars of night air

burning my burnt fingers,

and stars of water molecules

rippling down below

and stars of thrilling melodies

ringing from the bell tower

and stars of my own,

palpable as I peak

from under a branch

and the city glitters into being,

stars of probability functions and many-worlds

collapsing in the existence of many-minds

but somehow always the way I see it,

and only when I see it.

Each scientist and poet

got their fame

by listening to the stars

and reporting what they heard.

No more or less

could ever be said

about anything in the world,

but stars and stars

is all we are,

little nuclear reactors of light

so bright

our after image spans the solar system,

pushing further everyday.