The Universe Says Goodnight - 01/11/17

These bitter bites
don't belong buried
among the bright blossoms
that bloom here now.
Be free,
coarse tension,
clenched jaw,
caged breath.
Let limbs and eyelids
fall like
lilting lullabies
while lingering sorrow is lifted.
Leave it in the past.
No supernova stirs the skies,
no comet crashes,
no nebula nips at nearly-napping minds,
not a photon falls out of place.
Release your weariness and sleep.  

QFT - 09/18/16

In a breath
between intense
presses of lips
and hips,
the end of your kiss
rips the heavy
stiffness
of stress
from my limbs.
In the skip
of hearts beating
chest to chest,
in the voltage spike
between firing neurons,
in the hollow space
between nucleons,
I almost feel
as if any of this
is real
and not just
excitations
of some
abstract field;

as if your touch

is more than just

the Coulombic force

between us;

as if this moment

is enough.

Supernova Skies - 08/17/16

No matter how far away
I accelerate,
this inverse-square potential
tries to pull me back
to that place,
tries to tell me I'm essential
to that space
of mind and time
is slowing down
with the weight
of these words around,
the pressure's burning
up the sun,
the vacuum's swallowing
every sound.
I'm paralyzed under
supernova skies,
keep your dreamy looks
and starry eyes
wrapped up in parting glances,
sucked into black hole romances
like your first slow dance is
gonna change your chances
of skipping out on goodbyes and
escaping the event horizon.

Meteoroid - 06/07/16

I always thought that I was going to
burn,
disintegrate into a billion pieces,
fall apart,
lose cohesion,
scatter like ash,
as nothing large enough to impact,
as a meteor.

But as the surface looms
I think I might
survive.

Sometimes I Wish - 06/04/16

Sometimes, "I Wish I Was A Girl" by Counting Crows plays and I'm never sure if it's okay for me to sing along or if that'll give someone the wrong impression, even if it's just me, singing alone in my bedroom.

Sometimes, I wish I was a boy so I didn't have an existential crisis every time I hear my high-pitched voice or want to bind or a store clerk tells me I'm welcome to use any changing room .... on the ladies' side.

Sometimes, I wish I was a girl so that I didn't have to explain what I "really" meant when I said, "I am so gay for Rey."

Sometimes, I wish I was a boy so that I could hate my curvy hips without feeling like I've disgraced the entire body positivity movement.

Sometimes, I wish I was a girl because my mother always wanted a daughter ad I can't help thinking, would it really be so tough to just suck it up and give her this? My honest existence and happiness aren't that important.

Sometime, I wish I was a boy so that I didn't feel guilty over the little hint of joy I get when anyone mistakes me for one or addresses me as "sir" on the bus.

Sometimes, I wish I was a girl so that no one could accuse me of not being a feminist or of forsaking all the joys of womanhood or of no longer being a suitable role model for young women in physics. Look, what the young people need to know is that they don't have to hide any aspect of themselves to succeed in science, that electrons have no bias against my gender identity, that mathematical proofs will still be as logical no matter who you choose to be, that experiments will work the same no matter who runs or analyses them, and any professor, adviser, or peer who says otherwise can come talk to me. I've got poems and rage set to burn pages and pages, whatever it takes to make them see.

Sometimes, I wish I was a boy so that you'd take me seriously.

Sometimes, "I wish I was a girl, so that you would believe me."

I thought we were - 06/04/16

a pair of binary stars
caught in each other's
gravity,

but the laws of physics
don't seem to apply to you,
just me:

spinning, spiraling
around you seemingly
endlessly

while you shine, shimmer, startle,
off in your own
galaxy.

Never Have I Ever - 05/31/16

Have you ever loved a distant star?
Have you ever loved a light so far
away that her warmth dissipates
before ever reaching the love that waits?
Have you ever loved a burning sun,
her beauty seen by everyone
so for lightyears in all directions,
all they speak of is her perfect?
No? Well, nor have I.
What I wouldn't give to try.

Ira - 05/27/16

Incredible
iridescent irises
illuminating interactions,
ionizing each iota
of anxiety from my being.
Imaginary numbers and ideal gases
fall immensely short
of their intrigue.
I would need to know
every complexity and beauty of the
infinite
before I could write them
into a poem.
I hope this will suffice.

Get Me A Telescope - 05/27/16

I've been more into particles
than planets
but
their heavenly eyes
have me
researching a career
in astronomy.
What a gift
to stare
at crescent moons
and lips
for a living.
It keeps me
living.

Cosmological Constant - 05/26/16

I have seen the universe in you and

you

are far more beautiful
than anything Hubble could have captured:
kindness permeating like dark matter,
love expanding and expanding faster
that has me humbled and enraptured,
leaving me to wonder how I stumbled
upon this shimmering collection
of particles and light
whose mere presence lifts and lights
the darkest night.

Her lips are nebula,
constellations blooming in each
soft word.
Her smile, I think
sparked the Big Bang.
At least, it did for me.
The blazing blue of her eyes
could only have come
from an O-type star.

Look how they shine.
Look how she shines.

And if her eyes are stars,
then each blink is a sunset.
O, Love, don’t go yet.
I haven’t loved you enough yet,
haven’t held you enough yet,
haven’t found the words to express what
I heard each held breath,
haven’t found the words to express what
I felt in each caress.
Haven’t simplified this stress tensor
or understood how our particles
interact together.
But these calculations could take forever
and simulation does little better
to stimulate all these songs I felt
but couldn’t recite without the help
of someone else’s chords
and keys
and melodies.
I suppose, now, it’s too late
to begin singing memories
that have drifted beyond the Kepler Belt.

But should this wandering comet
ever stray back into your orbit,
O, Love,
I hope I melt.

Terminal Velocity - 05/26/16

I am falling,
hard and fast.
I have fallen,
hard and fast.
Here, at last,
at terminal velocity,
but it feels like
I still should be
accelerating
toward them.
Can't I fall
any faster?
Can't I crash
any harder?
Hurry,
let me hurry,
back to them.

Sin - 04/18/2016

Stunning supernovae,
a superposition of heavenly spirits
sprawled like spectral lines,
spontaneous symmetry breaking
or a systematic supergravity,
the strong interaction
stringing us together,
supercritical points,
a shattered standard model,
the sublimation of skin to breath,


but I'd take a silent second
in her smile
over all of it.

Asymptotic Freedom - 04/14/16

An abundance of antimatter
annihilating
each paired particle
bound by
ambiguous operators
until this
androgynous animation
is retrieved.
To the
agitprop artists
attracting catharsis,
I ask your assistance
in resistance
of the arbitrary axioms
appointed at birth
to restrict our creation
to a binary basis,
that spans just a fraction
of the human adventure.

I'll no longer abide
by this planar existence,
as intrinsic as
Euclid's Fifth.

I'm begging:
bomb this binary.

Neutrinos - 04/14/16

Somewhere between
standing and sinking,
sure and shaken,
screaming and singing,

I am ever changing,
with each oscillation,
from production
out through void,
a ghostly figure
glimpsed only by
unconserved momentum.

Beta Decay - 02/05/2016

I've been falling apart:
complex exponentials
complicating existential
crises exacerbated
by soft syllables
of reassurance.
You know,
kind words
usually pass
through me
like neutrinos


but yours
turn me into
mile of lead.

Primordial Black Holes - 08/05/15

all the unseen things
holding us together
like galaxies tethered
by strands of
Dark Matter
do not pass my Detection
despite weak interactions

Glueballs - 08/05/15

quartic interactions
strongly coupled
confined to this
white space
of heartbreak
asymptotically diverging
further away
pulling me
back to you

Pole - 04/07/15

A residue of panic
like sweat stepping
into a cool room;
like music
from down the hall,
with a bass line
shamed by your heartbeat.

weak interaction - 03/19/15

heavy eye lids
are hard to open

heavy lips
are hard to speak with

heavy limbs don't want
to leave bed

heavy particles
mediate this
weak interaction

won't you break me down
into something
light enough
to just

drift away?

Resonance Frequency - 03/14/15

Just leave the pieces lying there.
I wouldn't want to hurt
a single hair
if you tried to rearrange
the splintered shards
that have disengaged
from this week
and began to seek
the state of lowest energy.
They've already sunk
too far into apathy
and won't be drawn out
by soliloquy.
But that's okay because
it doesn't take that much
to shatter me.
Apparently
I've got an all-too-common
resonance frequency.