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.

0.707 - 10/30/12

I feel like
one over the
square root of two
is following me
everywhere I go,
in each math problem,
physics equation,
chemistry example;
one number
is creeping
over my calculator's screen,
repeating eerily,

0.707.

I feel like
Pascal is following me
everywhere I go,
at each decision I make,
each hesitance,
each crossroad,
one flawed argument,
encroaching on all
my on-goings,
whispering,

"The reward outweighs
the cost."

I feel like
Robert Oppenheimer
has an apartment
in my brain,
a little one room studio
covered in books
and white boards
and equations
and bags of tea,
with Curie next door
on the right
and Bohr next door
on the left.
Joe Strummer,
Pablo Neruda, and
Langston Hughes
live a floor below.
Captain Picard,
Hamlet, and
Carl Sagan
live a floor above.
They all wander in and out
of the lobby
of my cerebellum,
chit chatting,
gossiping,
deriving equations,
mincing verse
and memorized lines,
yet all end up saying,

"Physics or Poetry?"

I feel like
OR
is following me
everywhere I go,
defining what I can
and can never
have, hold, be,
taunting aspirations,
burning lists of goals,
tearing down
carefully crafted towers
of fanciful futures
in harmonies of

"Position or momentum?
Emotion or structure?
Science or art?"

I feel like
the things I think of
too often
have warped my mind
around them
and the only path
to freedom is

AND.

Sierra's Concerto - 10/26/12

Sweet Jupiter rising
Sweet cascade of moons
Flying
Flying for you
Somewhere
Out there
Another body of water
Awaits the spark
That brings it all to life
Rearranges the dice
Turns back time
Sweet Jupiter spinning
Sweet storm clouds look so pretty
So far away
Sweet Jupiter singing
Where no one can hear
Or say
A thing anyway
Sweet Jupiter
All for you

The Ballad That Never Should Have Been - 09/28/12

There's a pub at the end of the world where the dead kids drink their dreams away. There's a hole in the wall at the end of it all where the sinners cry blasphemy. And the only two that you need to know are called Lonely and Miserable, so take two shots of all they've got and call me when your life is over.

The only kids in the world

are the ones who haven't 

died yet,

because the only kids in the world

are the ones who haven't

tried yet.

And the laughter you hear,

full of dread,

full of fear,

is from the one

who are already gone.

And the smirks that you see,

full of glee,

- misery -

are the ones that are singing

this song.

Lonely and Miserable

hit the road

in an old station wagon

with no where to go,

with the last of their marbles,

and a heavier load

than they would never

return with,

so that at the end of it all,

at Hell's last call,

at the peak of a mountain,

on the edge of The Fall,

they could lose all control,

they could lose their souls,

and know how it

so wasn't worth it.

From St. Sanity

to the Point of No Return,

fighting vanity

and they lessons they

didn't want to learn,

they found thirty bullets

and thousands of pills.

So with their limited knowledge

and minimal skill

they decided to burn

it all down

to the bones,

to the shell

of the home

they could not longer find,

the security that had died,

the loves that had lied.

In the Shady Part of Town,

they found a pub

at the end of the world

where they gambled

happy memories away.

In small little towns,

they met friends

all around,

with whom they

could never stay.

Because the only kids in the world

are the ones who haven't

died yet,

because the only kids in the world

are the ones

who haven't tried yet.

And the smiles that hid the lies

and the midnight cries

are all you want to see.

And the hints here and there,

evidence so bare,

you just let it be.

Lonely and Miserable

hit the road

in an old station wagon

with no where to go,

with the last of their marbles,

and a heavier load

than they would never

return with,

so that at the end of it all,

at Hell's last call,

at the peak of a mountain,

on the edge of The Fall,

they could lose all control,

they could lose their souls,

and know how it

so wasn't worth it.

From St. Sanity

to the Point of No Return,

fighting vanity

and they lessons they

didn't want to learn,

they found thirty bullets

and thousands of pills.

So with their limited knowledge

and minimal skill

they decided to burn

it all down

to the bones,

to the shell

of the home

they could not longer find,

the security that had died,

the loves that had lied.

In the blackness they awoke

to and echo when they spoke

of the deeds

that it seems

no one speaks of.

And in one universe,

no one wrote this verse,

and no one ever dies.

But in this one

Lonely and Miserable

hit the road

in an old station wagon

with no where to go,

with the last of their marbles,

and a heavier load

than they would never

return with.

West and Lance - 09/14/12

I wrote you a letter

And I sent it in the mail

And I hope that you get it soon

Because life is better

Though the world is frail

And I need you to know it too

The internet can't deliver

Butterscotch candies

You can't fill and email with glitter

It's enough

To keep in touch

But heartache requires so much

More to keep you from growing bitter

So I wrote it all down on paper

And shoved it all inside

An envelope no bigger
Than the words that I did write

I sealed it with a poem

I signed it with a sigh

I sent it off to no one

Who can't tell truth from lie

I wrote you a poem

And I sent it in the mail

And I hope that it finds its way home

Because despite the world's solemn

And despite the world's ail

I want you to know how I’ve grown

I’ve written 300 poems

About giving up

And only a dozen about trying

I’ve spent so much time

Keeping it all inside

From the actually tears

To the fear of crying

So, Hallelujah,

You can break me down

Any time that you like

Because though he's on the east coast

And she's within a day's bike ride,

It'll always be there names

Those cords bring to mind

So I wrote it all down on paper

And shoved it all inside

An envelope no bigger
Than the words that I did write

I sealed it with a poem

I signed it with a sigh

I sent it off to no one

Who can't tell truth from lie

I won't ever know

Whether it was just a phase

But I know that I never will care

Because each painful step

On each tortured leg

Are my stories to share

Are what got me from there to here

This is what I need to tell you

This is what you need to hear:

I love you, I miss you,

I'll never forget you,

Our friendship grows stronger each year,

You're brilliant, you're beautiful,

Hilarious and wonderful,

Steadfast and noble,

Insane and uncontrollable,

And you've given me the strength

And the hope and the brains

To continue without any fear

So I wrote it all down on paper

And shoved it all inside

An envelope no bigger
Than the words that I did write

I sealed it with a poem

I signed it with a sigh

I sent it off to no one

Who can't tell truth from lie

Physics Shorts - 09/12/12

I.
Waves, waves everywhere
Oscillations in my hair
Physics is made up of oscillations
Described in mathematical incantations

II.
Frictionless surfaces are so much fun
Vacuums are where the best physics is done
Think it's impractical and can't hack it?
Then get out of Theoretical and into Mechanics!

I Hope It Wasn't Taboo - 09/12/12

Standing on the pulpit
of a Catholic chapel
doesn't bring me any closer
to God
than sitting in the woods.
I figured that as long as I was
at a Catholic school,
I might as well look around
and see if he 
was there.

I met him once
in my backyard,
watching cottonseeds exist
and I met him again
in my bedroom,
sipping orange juice
and blasting music.
I created him in my mind
and I've killed him
once or twice.
I've asked him about math and physics
and about fate and destiny,
mostly to yell and argue,
because he never gives any answer.
He was my favorite hallucination
for a couple of weeks,
but now I like
the characters in my stories
a bit better.
But I haven't seen him here
at a Catholic school.
His "son"
is in every one of my classrooms,

but where is he?

Una Taza de Corazón - 09/11/12

La cosa sobra

té con cafeína

es que lo tiene

cafeína pero

no tiene tan

mucho cafeína

como café.

Café me hace

saltar y correr

cuando quiero

escribir o estudiar.

Café me hace

dormir y descansar

cuando quiero

saltar o correr.

Café me hace

escribir y estudiar

cuando quiero

dormir o descansar.

La cosa sobra

té con cafeína

es que no lo

tiene tan mucho

cafeína como café.

Té me hace

calma y tranquila

cuando todo mi

trabajo me ha

rabiado.

Té me hace

escribir con fuerte

cuando mi estrés

ha robado mi

imaginación.

Té me hace

sonreír

donde café

me haga

querer llorar

con tema.

Café me da

dolor de mente.

Té destruye

mi pena.