Blood&Bone - 01/08/14

I am the cure for the common cold.
I am a pot of coffee at midnight.
I am white blood cells.
I am critical mass of fissile material.
I am 30 hours, 40 hours awake.
I am complete the goal to eat.
I am weakly interacting massive particles.
I am color confinement.
I am so close to straight As.
I am decaying.

Tinnitus - 01/07/14

When the ringing in my ears
becomes mundane
and commonplace
and I don't jolt my head
around for bells
or a frayed cable
plugged into the television,
turning my head
like some anachronistic
ship's wheel
to see if one orientation
fades away,

then you may lose hope
that I will
learn to breathe clean air
and chase silver sunlight
without having to be
reminded.

Abyss - 01/06/14

I miss the
idea
of you.
The possibility
of a text,
the hope
of a touch.
I miss open doors
and windows
more than
half-drunk conversation
from half
of us.
I miss "if,"
not swallowed in
a gaping hole
that leads
but one way:
down.

She - 01/05/14

I identify as a woman
but really I am

steel bones
forged in the heart
of a star erupting
into its successor
with diamonds in
my joints
and venom in
my marrow;

mythril muscles
knitted by the goddess
of revenge
but tailored to my bone
by forest sprites
weary of fire;

plastic veins
vibrating under my skin
every time
needles
eyes
scissors
or the monsters hiding in men
are mentioned;

blue fire
and lightning bugs
and punk rock music
and decaying charm quarks
wrapped in paper,
painted in crayon,
choked in ribbon,
drowned in books;

captain,
wizard,
queen,
debate mother,
teacher,
shadow.

Tea Shop - 01/03/14

Don't look up from the coffee pot
where your sweet tea tears
flavor bitter caffeination
to feign regeneration
of your heavy, longing eyes
and quicken the pace of your heart
with chemical uncertainty.
 So in the dust between
first edition Dickinson anthologies,
pine for pages
to spark beneath your fingers
and the scent of rose petal tea
to fill your heaving lungs.

Increased Police Activity on 82nd - 01/02/14

A healer handed me
a miracle stone
while we waited for the bus
outside of a bank
being robbed,
red and blue flashing lights
for a block in
every direction.
He said I was going to be
on a magazine
because I had vision.
He said to remember
that no matter how much
hate, racism, and evil
we encounter,
there is also and always
love.

2014 - 01/01/14

Capture the world in more words and memories
and less regrets and fantasies.
More tea, less coffee;
more coffee, less espresso shots;
more espresso shots, less procrastination;
more procrastination to look at the stars.
Look at the stars.
Look at the moon.
Ask friends to walk with me,
ask friends to dine with me,
watch movies with me,
laugh with me,
sit in silence and study with me.

Graph Paper - 12/01/13

I've heard tale
of lives
that fit inside
of neat blue lines
on graph paper,
flowing like poems
that actually rhyme,
and, from time to time,
I tried to stay confined.
But I don't grow like
differentiable functions;
I grow like vines.
I grow intertwined
with other
not so tidy lives
that hopefully
aren't too eager
to leave mine. 

How Are You? - 11/26/13

If the sky is full of emptiness
is it really even full?
And if not,
can't you think of a better
description of its emptiness
than "full?"

"So focus on the stars!"
And the star dust?
That fraction of infinity?
That 5% of matter?
I am that star dust
and I want something more.

Feynman Diagram - 11/13/13

Color me potential.
Highlight paths
that sprawl away
from the interaction
of the present.
Shade each outcome;
cool colors for low days
and warm colors for low days
where I still have the momentum
to smile
and colorless confinement
for nights
when I fall on your floor,
close my eyes,
and interject parables
and physics equations
into your day-to-day life.

Sure,

there's some finite possibility,
but here's how I see it.

Covenant - 11/113/13

Pass me through
this bisected flesh,
this disjoint bone,
these severed arteries,
split infinitives,
bloodless muscle
over bloodied soil.
Bear these words
before mountain and sea,
before Heaven and Earth,
eternal to my
fleeting soul,
fleeting to the sky's
eternal emptiness,
and should I stray
from this oath,
cut a covenant from me.

Eigenvalue Equation 10/24/13

Your soul must contain
the Identity operator
because you're an
Eigenfunction
of every heart that's
ever operated on you:
you take something
but Remain unchanged.
I can know you
and anything else
to Arbitrary precision.

Degradation Ceremony - 10/23/13

Wipe away the smudged make-up
that I ruined
before I ever applied it;
cast aside
clinking jewelry
crafted from discarded mementos;
strip;
peel back flushed skin;
scoop away viscera,
my liver poured out on the ground;
knot veins,
burn bones,
break heart and lungs;
penetrate cells,
shake off electron shells,
split protons down
to the jeweled quarks and gluons.

Then put me all back together
with a poem
and your favorite song
and your anecdotes about
your cousin
and your repeated
adventure stories
and your bitter rants
and your blushed cheeks
and parables about
physics equations.

Consistent Field - 10/22/13

The effective energy
from your presence
perturbs this system
beyond analytic solution,
computational approximation,
any sort of tidy answer
that I can pluck
from this situation
and apply to another.
I've made estimations
based on every single
previous confrontation,
yet the next never
coheres to my models.

Bottom Quark - 10/21/13

Bare beauty
like the fields between people
blinking out of sight
in the cross hairs
of our gaze;

what particles
transmit our
conversations
and shared glances?

with what metals
would you sculpt
the solutions to their
transcendental equations?