A Lesson In Cosmology - 12/04/14

You are so incredibly
small.
One in seven billion people
on a planet that is
one in nine orbiting
a sun that is
one in 400 billion stars
in a galaxy that is
one in 100 billion galaxies
in the universe that
is all
of everything.
Infinitely big
that makes you look so
infinitely small.
And the same is true
of everyone you meet.
Your cosmic insignificance,
your fear, and your pain
are shared
by every other being
in existence.
You and I are so incredibly
small.

You are so incredibly
huge.
You are one made of
100 trillion cells
made of
70 trillion atoms
made of protons, neutrons, and electrons,
made of quarks and gluons,
made of light an energy,
made of singularities,
down to the smallest limit.
You are 7 billion people,
you are 9 planets,
you are 400 billion stars,
you are 100 billion galaxies,
you are a universe
that is all
of everything.
Infinitely small
that makes you look so
infinitely big.
And the same is true
of everyone you meet.
Your cosmic significance ,
your pride, and your purpose
are shared
by ever other being.
You and I are so incredibly
big.

When I Say That You're Stardust - 01/19/14

Don't let anyone tell you that you can be anything;
that if you dream it, you can be;
that you'll get anywhere wishing on stars.
This world was not built to grant your wishes,
nor mine,
and, someday, you'll find
that your blood is required to get very far.
I want you to know this going in.
I don't want you to know
that the world is mostly darkness;
I want you to know
that you're the world's only light.
I don't want you to know
that life is a battlefield;
I want you to know
when and how to fight.
I don't want you to know
your place;
I want you to know
how to scream,
I want you to know
what your words taste like
when they leave your mouth;
how to say "love" and mean it;
how to say "hate" and mean it;
what equality looks like,
what power feels like,
and how to have the parts
of both that you want and need
in order to breathe
a sigh of relief
in this eighty, ninety, hundred year struggle
of your life.

I want you to know
you'll never get anywhere wishing on stars.
I want you to know
you'll get exactly where you are
and you'll never be happy
if you aren't allowed
to watch comet trails in the night
and imagine a utopia
where you don't have to fight
for the right to be
exactly the way you were born.
I want you to know
that a star is more you
than a mirror and
I want you to know
that the same is true
for everyone you meet.
I don't want you to know
that you can be anything
because I want you to know
that you are everything.

The Smallest Possible Unit of Soul

There's a quantum computer
in my soul,
impacting the body,
impacted by the body,
like a child and a fool,
rejecting that
"Whatever is, is"
and letting in stray cats.
There's a jumble of qubits
in my soul,
making errors and errors
on perception and sense,
on the way things are joined,
seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt.
I experience the sensation
of perceiving you

(but you probably aren't there

[thanks, Descarts]

{But I think you are}])

in a transfer of information
as a superposition of
binary code
in infinite combinations
of α and β.

God,
mathematics,
and my own existence
search for an ad hoc
theory of everything
devoid of my sense perception
such that I cannot imagine.
What in my mind is innate
and where does it come from?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

10/11/10 - 10/11/10

I know nothing
relativly
something
but anyhting
is everything
when it come
to certain things
the one fact
that won the debate
the one case
that should have been made
one little
twitch
flick
slip
and the life drips
out of the shell
the cup shatters
upon the ground

Nature Walk - 09/23/10

Death in the vivid life of nature:
leaves on the ground,
apart from the tree,
we call so green and rejuvenating,
really a lack there of.
The ground is blanketed in bodies.

Some are old,
already shrivled
and they crunch
with the same sharp
click
as my pencil breaking.
They are brown,
all their original green drained,
sucked into the soil below,
into the grass,
into the ancient tree roots,
into the baby worms.
They are heavy,
do not rustle gently in the wind,
do not lift from the earth
and dance spiritually
on a passing breeze.

But some are still bleeding.
Freshly fallen leaves of yellow,
with trickling veins of green
still so prominent
on the soft ground.
Young bodies,
bright, beautiful, benevolent.
What shall become of these?
These children of the world?
Falling before their time
or maybe ripped from branches
by beings more childish than they.
These ones flit and flutter,
spin softly and sputter,
spiraling sweetly back to the soil
when the wind ceases.
So light and lofty,
a satisfied sigh,
a lover's lament,
a gracious gust from gods
still so unknown.
Spirited souls of shimmering leaves,
where fly thee?
To the arms of power?
To the lips of love?
Or to the warm dirt?
To a new world
or a new beginning
or just back to
where you came?
Is your energy not conserved
as it transfers
back to the earth?

09/21/10 - 09/21/10

Privacy
Won't you tell me
What you see
In intimacy?
Is it clarity?
Curiosity?
Does memory
Draw us closely?

The Road Goes On Without Us - 07/15/10

if we all
were dead,
sure,
no more pain,
but no one
to appreciate
the magic of
the lack of
tears

so, no matter
what is said,
by dead
or dying men,
there’s a reason,
some reason,
to fight
for your life
against your own
caving heart

They’re Immortalized On VHS, I’m Changing Everyday - 07/07/10

Christopher told me
He told me
He told me
“Believe.”
Said:
“You’re brave
And you’re strong
And you’re smart.
Smarter than you think.”
But forever
And ever
And ever
And ever
Is even longer
Than that seems
And it’s getting harder
And harder
To believe
That I ever dreamed
Such a dream
But Christopher told me
He told me
He told me

“Believe”


My captain
He told me
He told me
He told me
“There are four lights.”
Not five
Or three
Or anything
In between
Believing is seeing
And I start believing
That I am seeing
Things not there
So maybe
Just maybe
It’s five

Like the World in its Way - 06/27/10

There’s this raspberry bush in my backyard
like the world
in the way that its branches;
all covered in deadly thorns,
stained with blood
and berry juice;
reach out into the evening light
with a will so strong
that those branches begin
to defy gravity,
growing straight up,
wrapping those thorns
around anything in its way,
desperate for the sky,
for the stars,
for whatever they think
lays beyond,
because their roots
have dug into everything,
invasively,
and ruined
their own chance of surviving
with the other plants,
and still they reach on,
not seeing that it’s killing them,
every last one.

There’s this raspberry bush in my backyard
 like the world
in the way that the black raspberries,
the ones hardened
and toughened
and sweetened
by the sun to be the color
of the sky at midnight,
all purple and black,
stick on the ends of the branches,
basking in the evening sun light,
taking it all in.
They are
harsh,
and hard,
business like in their way,
getting what they need,
whatever they need.
They shroud the other berries,
the red raspberries,
with the mushy,
heart-like bodies,
that crush and smash
as you try to pluck them.
Those red raspberries,
who cower under the thick,
raspberry bush leaves,
so much sweeter tasting
than the purple one,
but so much
trickier
to get to,
so much more
challenging
to reach
a slender hand
through the delicate thorns,
to be stabbed and pricked,
and to stain those thorns
with the sticky
red liquid
under the thin skin
of the slender hands.