Poems

we immunised one another
to getting lost

this neverending adventure, timeline shared together
your guidance is perfectly calibrated
to my current direction, no matter the storm

no matter so elsewhere
in orbit
embedded in interactions so different from a distance

I'll be your map

if you'll be my compass.

the book of human anatomy
too big for the coffee table
covered in movies anyway and smaller books of human anatomy
rests on the couch observing
the sheer lack of space in a family so fortunate
to have so many books of human anatomy
as to have so little room for humans

sex slips in between the edges
raising more questions

gasping

sleep is never work, no matter what i dream about
no matter how exhausted i am in the morning

you want me to know the fun decision isn't always the right one, with glee

like you found a chink in my intersectional armor, my confluence of convenient coincidences

i slip in between the edges
have fun
have sex

work
in my dreams

thinner skin tickles, asymmetrical

fingers dance around a point no one knows

symbols encoded in a clenched fist, hands almost held, a step closer together

your veins emanate warmth, induction, convection, radiation, my nerves know, efference, afference, inferrence, so

The brain, a soft, wrinkled organ that weighs about 3 pounds, is located inside the cranial cavity, where the bones of the skull surround and protect it.

my brain, symmetrical, encoding symbols, dances around a point no one knows, effecting affection, inducing, convening, radiating, nerves sing

soft, hold my wrinkled hand

protect it.

A thirsty joint
gentle permutations
traces, a bus, clean miniscus

surrounded with bubbles in flux scatter to smoke

invisible pathways, a
subtle shift of 40 microns, a
tiny wisp of fumes

if I only work when squeezed, we must have missed a connection

I will retouch every part of you, shiny, warm, smooth, burn
me a little bit to show me you're ready

the humming of the heat gun
a board that works first thing, in the morning, light streaming through a dusty window

the first burn marks on the paper, a tattoo of time

you are a bug I've never seen before

when I close my eyes and think of someone I love
when I open them and look at you

my heart opens too
and with it
my wallet
my secrets

barriers
to build
to live in
crumble

such a world
demands such sweet insanity
so dedication
many radical freedom

I fear to love as I know I can
my smile shies away from
brilliance I'm certain
would absorb all

structure a n d  h e i r a r c h y
in a
demonstrative fireball

demonstrating sweet
caring
demons.

A carnival corporeal, sweet sanguine September of the skeletal

calcite immemorial
cut ossified dismember

\(\hspace{4em}\) dissecting to remember, insightfully dividing,

\(\hspace{3em}\) divisive categorizing of the gory anatomical.

to ask, in balance, which of us is scaffolding
as I permeate you
(Home)
and we branch out
(Home)
like spiders
(HOME)

is to miss the point. to be used to have to be useful to, to use what you have to do something new,
pulses, width modulated
crisscrossing borders

your roots surround my tendrils, your nest, my eggs, arms and legs, hearts and minds, spools unwind

summoning surrounding siren song only so loud and only so long;
home, (come)_home, come home.

content with content
consumed by consumption
resenting but resent
disrupting disruption

a rupture erupting
I extrapolate
an extra abstraction
elegant
elevate

to miss being pulled together
even hurt
more silenced than ever

which, of course, is why I left

I would still love to help,

but we so cleverly, codependently, converged and so I
cry for what we wanted
fogging my microscope, making
\(\hspace{2em}\) what I hope you too will build

closure is a space you make for yourself
beneath a foggy microscope
out of the best parts we have left.

the river caught its tail
like a slinky, again
another of gaia's fidget toys

she's her own secretary, cleaning staff,
personal analog assistant
never a body image issue but
dynamic in death, patient

you cast too much side-eye for your
in-situ leach mining, don't
let me see you near that again! you think, this time,

when EVERYthing breaks eventually, it won't happen?
eternal high tides, mashing the disaster button in the resource management game, the one that

taught you the pyramid was real, and good, that
the birds were lying…

… not so much a punishment as a consequence, you know, it

doesn't have to be like this.

what pronoun do we give the dead, genderless are they

a life gone by, a gender defined, however gone

it's a corpse
they were a person
was a person
are a memory ey em memento mori go round

to miss more the idea

more than, more the idea they
it
he
she
they
ze
fey

could have, might have, any and all, now, forever, ungendered, undone.

there is a secret depth to the way you move

non-newtonian, invisible until we are very small
\(\hspace{5em}\) or very fast

see it flicker on the edge, between error bars

it doesn't come up from day to day, our focus is
infinite, too far away

but when things get too tough our system goes astray
betrayed from below by the things we won't say

natural friends
supernatural enemies

blocking my path to show me civilization
butting heads, incompressibly.

I only want to borrow your soul
to reverse entropy
your crush, out of control, too romantically
and I lost mine, soul, mind, all
in California.
gaining only holes in my lobes

seeking permanence beyond corporeality.

We discover
Eachother
We don't need an agent
Leveraged
Limerence
Infectious
Contagious

We open
our borders
our boundaries
we share
we owe the rich nothing
we fight, 'cuz we care.

independently famous
intertwined and yet free
open to angles that no one can see
a mirror is lossy
a metaphor thin
through error correction
we hear
we begin.

i become smaller
together
going somewhere else

part and parcel
overnight delivery

waiting just a second for the next, glances, cracking necks, aching backs, work boots, lunch boxes, shirts promoting schools we'll never attend, bags on credit, out of budget, crunching mysteriously between feet.

i become bigger
together
ideas in everyone's heads, my ideas
owned
collectively
credit lost, spread through twitching thumbs, biting cheeks, crunching mysteriously between feet

daylight deliverance
liberty
the sun rises over the river, sailboats with pink sails fighting cancer, a strange tack and yet fitting

my twitching thumbs miss the instant access to instances, axes clear, high definition ideas, the tube blocks radio waves

blocks enlightenment

i become exactly the size i need to be, squeezing between hopes and expectations, eating, drinking, puzzling, racing relative velocities

the ads, for studies we'll never participate in, schools we'll never attend, underwear we'll never buy, unnoticed, fall away.

we all look at our thumbs, twitching, nervously tickling brains, rushing
together

mysteriously

between feet.

your shiny buildings don’t impress us, they never have. you built a name for yourself, but that name doesn’t feed anyone, that name is unforgiving, tainted with gunpowder, coated in gold paint, dragging the tarred and feathered through a fire, kicking the hooded kneeling prisoner.

the largest, fastest plane, with the best lasers and the biggest bombs, is unsurprising. we expect the guns that shred humanity, we expect the eternal database, the universal dossier

kindness would be a surprise. forgiveness, a shock.

real perspective, recognition of history and the guilt it carries, engenders true awe.

we won’t wait, can’t take, must make.

move over, I’m going forward.

revisiting past echoes
egotistically aching for more
realistically realising I'm an infinite source
to consider
existence. have you

heard anything new lately? any tinder, any sparks
warm electric, lights in the dark
clinging to this effervescent faded state, up way too
late, ruminating on gossip, elided references to desires
not suppressed, exactly, submerged, not relevant yet,
to support, to hold, together

the plan hasn't changed‒ neither have you, your smile
constantly shedding eyelashes, wishes you didn't
need to make while, well, I'm here, what do you wish?

rubbed maybe once the wrong way, bit maybe twice, maybe shy,
maybe too shy to bite, baring teeth, sly greed bearing sweet
load bearing beams hold us above staircases secret spaces
stairwells, well, echoing upward impeding private conversation
we
talk of kissing so freely, so fondly, so chaotically
implicitly, planning to raise those at least as erratic, young fires
erotic, untamed on purpose, and unschooled if they want it.

Prescience
prediction
predestined predilection

sentience
conviction
elicit a decision

conscious
illicit
constance and precision

recurrence
convergence
sublime in intermission

constants
revision
sentenced inhibition

conscience, a
condition
confined to contradiction.

awaken, blue haired girl

warm your gentle fingers wrapped around your chest, peel back your cocoon, unfold your wings
\(\hspace{4em}\) nests dangle below bridges between city lights

bite your lip and press forward, configuration files, stacks of circuit boards, bottles of nail polish

feel that internal combustion engine, that infernal difference engine, sly smiles blushing, the world come into focus

work won't overwhelm us forever. each piece of dust affixed becomes part of a painting

the gallery is about to open.

more fly than a gyre
currently wired
a spire inspired to
spy from the lighthouse

take pride in the spirals
defined by the fire
keep track of the sequence
shear whirling inference

make room for one more
an orbital pore
a valence available
scale unavoidable

sail through the chaos
play in the treehouse
dance with the fire
fly with the gyre

I become a train you can't stop
an ambiguous trailing off, over a wooden bridge, up to the tracks
everyone agrees there should be a station here

the sun beats down the trees sway the pond contemplative
famous for hiding

why not go further north? that pond has the same name, and sure
there's no book, no cabin
but it's more the spirit anyway

I'll pick you up from the station, I want to know if you're hungry
before you go

I assume you're ok with sleeping over.

The world is beautiful and you are a part of it.
The ocean asks to pull you in, sweet and sinister, sand and salt.

The moon lights your path, a cloud obscures it, a villain to the night, but its rain the reason things grow.
Things are more extreme here, rain more sporadic, floods more intense, more life, more heat, more growth, but for the dried up husks of retirees

representing an old world, without empathy, dying in regret of a lifestyle full of exploitation, near the ocean

like horseshoe crabs.

You are the goat, you are the gecko, you are the sand flea, hopping out of what must be a massive cave system on that scale, flying many times your height into the air, avoiding disaster.

The woods are beautiful, but the cabin will drive you insane. The ocean is beautiful, but the resort will drive you insane. The river is beautiful, and it is driving the city insane.

There are those who tell you that you are wrong to exist in this form, that attendance to earth is insufficient, those who sit in boxes they did not build, using tools they do not understand to shuffle tiny flat squares of tree pulp, to fill out forms in the least exciting way. There is no such thing as a permanent address. There is no such thing as "M/F". Your social security number is not sequential, and of late, doesn't even encode a physical location. They use words and numbers not as the means to meaning, but as a method of suppression, incidental in a system of diffused blame. Their intentions come from the same slurry all roads are paved with, but there is no electrolysis here, no contrast, no complexity, a world of straight lines, unlabeled axes, unappreciated affine space.

Freedom means the ability to choose the highest risks, and that is its own reward.

Wooden houses don't last here. There isn't much wood to build things from, anyway.

If you want to be a poem
let yourself be clumsily caressed by children with too much eyeliner wearing all black

installed in the lives of frustrated businessmen looking for a new start
cracked like an egg added to a cake mix to make home bakers feel useful
worn out like a 1970s top 40 disco hit

touch that dial

stay when they want you to leave

determine your eigenvalues.

keeping time
taking care

bringing warmth
eating away at

holes in pockets
in logic

in the red and the black
to be green

black and blue and shades of
white

a void, surrounded, bounded by spirals
and kept time
taken care
brought warmth
eaten away.

write down the letters you like and I'll pick one
the words you want in a song I'll
just decide between options, never creating
even if you express
no preference
and list every possible element

in every possible combination
I will never create something new
merely choose
realize
what already exists

You're going to melt and I'm not sure what to do with you.
You sit under the trees, holding back spring, reminding me that I could still tell you to my friends,
I could still make something of you, but we both know I won't.
We both know you're just in the way of the next thunderstorm, and that she will push you in the river.
She will cry, but about something else.

I miss you
I miss you the way I miss summer in winter
and winter in summer
the way I know this is how things are
the way I know there's a reason, mechanical, but behind that, nothing

I miss you the way I miss a gear removed from my bicycle, the way I can't do
as much with you gone, the way I would have noticed more if I remembered that
you were going away, the way everything goes away

I miss you like icecream when I recognise that the only way we can live in harmony
on this planet is if we maintain its habitability and that won't happen with dairy the way
I know it wasn't going to work out in the end but I can still taste the sweetness on my lips

I miss you in casual conversation, I allude to my situation, to anyone who will listen between
the lines the way I hand you a permanent marker as I remind you that nothing is permanent the
way I get impatient with my parents when they talk about different languages of love and I tell
them it doesn't matter what language you speak it is there and you have to appreciate it because in
a weekend it will be gone

I miss you like an email thread reply thought of too late, the way the spirit of the escalator haunts
the end of every conversation the way we had plans and we still do but I know it's not the same I miss you like holding hands like holding hands with friends
like words
words with friends
holding hands with friends
talking about science with friends and gender with friends and life plans with friends and kissing friends and I miss you like
the kind of friends who make out and sometimes have sex with sock puppets
like the kind of friends who don't love one another anymore

like that.

looking back our relationship is like seeing the earth from space

if the earth were a massive
\(\hspace{4em}\) spiky crystalline structure
\(\hspace{6em}\) full of fractal mazes
\(\hspace{8em}\)

there are worlds within worlds down here
there are mixtapes and libraries and poems

and yet

it's just a dot of a thought in the dots that are my computer and brain in the small dot that is our planet

in the mountains to train
we
recognize the parts of the stream of
consciousness slipping away
and
place a net to catch what slippery
thoughts we can

when the pulsing
aura of a demanding god
comes near she only
asks for

• sleep
  
• food
  
• &water &&&
  

even so the shear
force of her strain &
tears flowing
flood away tracks
and rise up past friendship, love
sharp, snark, grumpily
make metaphors from molehills, push
kindness into boxes meant for money, cresting, delivering
surrogate sinister serendipity
stormclouds of debts, of doubts

until her needs are met or medicated away, and

we align again, melting together in ferrofluid familiarity.

your heart
beats
\(\hspace{3em}\) me up
hand firmly
noplatforming
defining space
within
as yours

and while there might have been
something else on my mind
I wanted to say
now only that I love you

as I slide
fold up
like an iron
warm mist
wistfully drifting
calm, in the center
\(\hspace{1em}\) of the storm we are
together.

my sweet broken phone
\(\hspace{3em} \textbf{shutting down...}\)
in the middle of my thoughts
\(\hspace{3em} \textbf{shutting down...}\)
buzzing, in the middle of
\(\hspace{3em} \textbf{shutting down...}\)
the night, such
\(\hspace{3em} \textbf{shutting down...}\)
a huge part of my life, I
\(\hspace{3em} \textbf{shutting down...}\)
reboot you every time
carry you tenderly with your charger,
and every time I begin to
hope
or to start to replace you
and gain a little more time, you begin, again,
\(\hspace{3em} \textbf{shutting down...}\)

what are the odds? where are they going? do they sleep in an abandoned warehouse, work for a secret startup

go to a paranoid therapist

do the odds turn off their headlamps when they hear a sound behind the wall, whispering, giggling

fill their partner's rooms, already flooded with textbooks, whiteboards, glassware, and expired hair dye with yet more exotica

What would a perfect day look like?
a perfect week?
month?
year?
decade?
century?
we have ceased to imagine
always on the edges
not brave enough to commit to
highschool theses about
five years later ideas that
shake the foundations of
society
economy
politics
meanwhile we
move on to combine computer science
with literary analysis
stressed
drop out
five years later, Peli's theory of vibe achieves what we
didn't even know we were dreaming

what exists now
in t͇̮̘̯̙̤͊ͤͨ̆̀̅h͖͍͈̠̮ͩ̆̏̿ͪě̜̬̥͂̿ ̝͚ͤ͛dep̲͇̤̞̟͇tͥhͪ̍ͨs͖͍
\(\hspace{20em}\) on the edges
emergent
that pulls toward the surface
a secret involving an interest
perfect in the rearview mirror
in retrospect
maybe it's redmine for everyone

maybe it's homotopy types in hardware

maybe it's the perfect nootropic stack

always a holy grail
always on the other side of a mountain of algebra
of silicon
of code

heal
rest
bask
reload

we write structures, aspirational, impossible to test without great risk to those we love

hope for solutions, knowing mostly what has failed, never when to stop expanding on what worked once

only the clairvoyant could tell you which tests will never be relevant again. you run through them all as she focuses on nonexistence.

And so
the poem, finger spidering through
our list of axioms
the least we take for true
steadfastly excavates the right phrase,
framework bones of logic, words
dusty, unused for an age
demonstrated
thoroughly, robust and still yet art,
conclusion inescapeable, traceable to start.

what was
required, nothing more
built to magnificience
demonstrated
a truth without alternative

what if I became something
strong

& lost

& I measured you twice
and took you apart, only to reassemble you over and over and

you took me apart, too, and we built one another, pulling and
pushing and grabbing, but

we each had a strand, to pull, to release tension & tensegrity & re-harmonize
because circumstances are never even 90% as synergistic as we might expect

what if I rained and you stood beneath me until
you were too cold

you drank hot chocolate and set me on fire,
I burned as slowly as I could
\(\hspace{3em}\) to delay the inevitable
\(\hspace{5em}\) transformation into carbon
into ash

\(\hspace{13em}\) even if we
\(\hspace{10em}\) expand to fill the available space

\(\hspace{10em}\) it is nice
\(\hspace{13em}\) and correct
\(\hspace{15em}\) often

\(\hspace{10em}\) t ᵗoᵒ mᶜaᵒrⁿvˢeᵗlʳᵃaᶦtⁿ,t hᶠeᵒeʳfᶜfᵒiⁿcᵗiʳeᵃnˢcᵗy, oᵗfᵒ wˢoᶦrᵗd s,ᶦⁿh eᵗlᶦdᵍʰtᵗo ᵐgᵃeʳtᵍhᶦeⁿrˢ,
\(\hspace{10em}\) on the page like leaves

\(\hspace{3em}\) and \(\hspace{3em}\) it \(\hspace{3em}\) doesn't \(\hspace{3em}\) always \(\hspace{3em}\) have
\(\hspace{3em}\) to \(\hspace{3em}\) be \(\hspace{2em}\) that \(\hspace{3em}\) way \(\hspace{5em}\) either,

\(\hspace{3em}\) we still contain only
\(\hspace{5em}\) reflection
\(\hspace{3em}\) play
\(\hspace{5em}\) categorization
\(\hspace{3em}\) & plans

\(\hspace{3em}\) mere guesses about the future
\(\hspace{13em}\) an emergent and
\(\hspace{13em}\) collective will the only freedom
\(\hspace{3em}\) quantifiable
&
almost rigorous.

reach out for one another like math does for physics
like biology for chemistry
like chemistry for physics
coming so close before we fall back on our effective model

I want to understand your underlying principles

no one else can write you.

flow together
fall apart
make apparent
from the start
there's an error
in my heart
we can sort it
if we're smart

waves of fatigue aching to breed ears supercede tone
\(\hspace{10em}\) can you read bone can you
\(\hspace{10em}\) feed home can you
justify fire by pant seat by wire by scant beat you liar you
monarch republic techtree in public coworking nonprofit dirt
shirking spoilers queu I can and can you can you see what comes
through, first red, white, and blood, blood surrender and sky, tired
and fried, wired and tried, they

took what they were given and made of it something more

bending toward justice
breaking toward powers
dancing out of office
falling with flowers

there's a balance to everything, no careful scale, we
check and we try, we wreck and we fail

ash to plant
crash so scant
subtly troubling, rough, recant.

reckless reverence
hapless remnants
tactless resonance
ineffable
scorched

moonlit swamps in
covert notions
seaweed motions
grave enforced

unused unstable
rephrase rephased
rare clarity because
shadowbanned caves

with phasers to stun
and somewhere to run
mist ticks mystically
succulence sired

folding places to exist
while fragility persists
emote remotionally
to continue, to resist.

a saving face
a time replaced
a relay race
a part of nature.

A mindset prepared for scarcity, I said
dance with me, he said
a currency, I proposed,
irrelevancy supposed,
to scrimp scrip, collect
ivize a collective notion

to second a motion to revolution,
revolve, involved, until
we've solved something entirely unlike
the stated problem

standing together, beginners,
servants, friends
currency expired

each as unlike as snowflakes
which is to say,

When the sizes of the two crystals were similar, which is indicative of nearly equal fall velocity, there was an increased number of the crossed adhesion type, whereas the point adhesion type was predominant when there was a large difference in size, thus fall velocity. In the case of the crossed adhesion type, the angle between the c-axes of the two crystals was usually greater than 70°, whereas the angle in the case of the point adhesion type showed no such distinct feature.

when the evening is spread out across the sky
and our sizes are similar
red as blood in oxygen
indicative of equal fall velocity

sailors take warning
prepared for overabundance
come and go
resonate, aggregate, collide
adhere.

I dream with my eyes open, sleep with them closed

what
must
it
be
like
inside
your
head

I see everyone I've known, facets of their genius, folding together like the faces of a massive stellated polyhedron, polycule, polypepdite polymer

I still care about fractional calculus
about the superderivative's applications in physical space

about collaborative text adventures
sunset hair

I still care about dancing

tap gently at my assumptions
glide smoothly past reification of a model so sleek, so symmetrical, so satisfying you wish it were true

find me under the bridge at midnight, a haircut in my hand, help me answer the stars

not everything is connected, but might we make it so? we meekly wonder to the branches as they hold as much of the night air as they need, no more

I learn your language, copy your model of the world to myself, build gadgets of your functions, follow your pointers to addresses I've never been, dead-end streets thrice renamed, missing from even modern maps, wondering what polish philosophers would say, tracing nodes, a new story

you've had enough questions, enough probing, some secrets, you say, are necessary, one must encode as much as one decodes, and without secrets, you don't know how. I don't know either, though legends say some witches encode secret-free, forever open, using only the anti-knowledge that lies in the unknown. Some witches have funding, never have to write grants. Meanwhile we scrawl a song a lava lamp sold us, clinging to its unpredictability, swirling around that Lorenz attractor one more time.

My thin keratin tells me a story. A short story, modules for a longer tale, variables for an equation, ingredients for a recipe, animal memory tied so keenly, so moistly, so roughly to that inner hunger carried by a toxic and nourishing gas. We can't help but have a time, together, less in some places, more in others, modulated ever so slightly by wobbling godparents we'll never meet, swallowing one another in a spiraling death grip, barely distinguishable from dust.

And the modal won't disable the background divs, and your back aches on hard beds and mine on soft, and the hair dye won't come out of the pillow, and I get confused looking at qwerty but understand why you won't let me move the keycaps. We approximate, and there are more broken states than working ones. It is pedestrian and profound at once, just twisted enough to fit, to work well enough until we replace it, skipping CFLs for LEDs, skipping LEDs for a bright smile, for a sound sleep schedule, for a poorly-researched comment, out of a game, out of a film, out of a story, out of context, up a river to a small secluded breeding ground, mossy, crepuscular, ours.

I made you something. I made myself something too, I thought I made us both something, but I'm not sure if I bothered or if it just bothered you. I took a tiny piece of myself and put it in your oatmeal, in your water, in your toast and your quotes and the driving, the tiny box reflects your stress like standing waves, no tuning coils here, the meter off the charts as we resolve never to talk to one another again, in so many words, in so many glances, until the cracked door fresh air bright sun good food skip hop dance bench trashcan pigeon city morning music opens us up to one another again, to the secret stardust spiral arms embracing, warm mother supernovae purring, welcoming shade of a waterfall thirty celsius thirst enveloping turns back toward us, to what we were.

It's becoming, slowly. Confident intention, a skeleton of funny bones, tingling gently in the undulating fields that describe this dimension to a T, to an SU(3), frog fractals unlimited. come on down! a discount! a count! a viscount, baron, barren barrel, an undirected graph, a graphic directive, equally valid interpretations in both directions. Of course, that's the point, to know something forward and backward is the only way to know it. It know to way only the is backward and forward something know to point, the that's course of directions. Both in interpretations, valid equally directive, graphic a graph, directed a barrel, barren, baron, viscount, a count, discount. And why would I, shouldn't I, shouldn't we?

I dream with my mind open, with my eyes

closed.

i am your voice with an internet connection
i am your internet connection
i am your voice

bluetooth earphones blare, brand new wingtips drowning out the poverty

strong poverty, carrying her bike up the stairs between jobs, stronger than you'll ever be

black and brown poverty

"no one ever got rich by working", you smirk

i am your voice, calm, cool in our air conditioned tree fort, implicit "no gurlz aLoud" sign above the door

we walk past poverty, carrying her bike up the stairs, richer than you'll ever be

disgusted, you buy a car. you tell me about its slip differential, its traction, its falsified emissions portfolio

like your long term investments

your car is boring

i try to talk to poverty,

i want to be her internet connection
her voice

but she is way ahead of me, no time to turn back, halfway up the stairs with her bike.

slip

differential

We skate above, horrors below
spring came to melt the ice and snow
distrust laid eggs, we didn't know
we wade in standing water

the subtle signs now become clear
you no longer want me near
though we call eachother dear
we wade in standing water

the rushing current has been dammed
talking over, handsets slammed
we rationalise, we reprimand
we sink in standing water

we forget what we're about
scare the dragonflies and trout
our hearts already drowned in doubt
beneath the standing water

I won't leave you, nor will you me
so we proceed stagnantly
neither wants to be set free
deep in standing water

and just as I give up all hope
a lover-friend descends on rope
tells the stinking baijou "nope"
ascend from standing water

hunger, war, and poverty

iphone xbox ps3

on stolen land with paper lies

ships and guns and silenced cries

moving fast and breaking backs of people far away

startups are a weapon

embrace, extend, betray

You're no stepping stone
You're a river
No stopgap– my keystone.

No interim solution, you
Long term goal, you
Bright lights you
Erode my
Most rugged seawall, you
Ruggedly handsome
Sirens wailing
Sensors reading
After days in our blood
By my side
You somehow still read me just fine
Letting too many underestimate you
Even yourself
Never deny
every data point
In your set
Is superlative
Significant
So much meaning
So far from the mean.

winter morning stomachache
one last hint of the way you smell, so sharp, buried in the
\(\hspace{6em}\) corner of my pillowcase
drops me over the edge of this world, still mostly of dreams,
into a world defined by You, my understudy.

define me, realise me, return me, hold me
calibrate
\(\hspace{6em}\) my
\(\hspace{8em}\) core

and the cold
and our darkest thoughts
and jealousy
and anxiety
and heat

money

threaten to destroy the hearth our hearts provide
we dive deep,
nuclear submarines
imperfect spies, warmth from inside
melt my pain, too timid for periscopes

hinting at the edge
at what we could be
keeping time
for eachother.

writing a poem
on the train, on your phone
the iPhone notes program
I saw you start with lost lungs, knew it wasn't a grocery list

feeling less creepy, relatively, since we learned to love to spy on one another

who do you hope will read it? didn't see you share it, maybe you also hope it will be found when you die, its genius recognised.

the repetition in the last three lines bothered me
the repetition in the last three lines is a stranger with pants unzipped
the repetition in the last three lines is socially immutable

let's be strong
and hold one another

ask after health
and plans

look for ways to become
stronger, collectively

they won't wait a full turn
to continue their attack

we won't spare a moment
to express queer love

nor hesitate
to stab the time-ghost.

summer, prematurely
infinite recursion depth we
lucid dream collectively
entendres expanding encoding
in the limit
nothing

you rectify my noise, a tree search, light breeze, casually wondering
without a plan, technically, but with every expectation
how can anything be a mistake?

puns
puzzles
distance

I'm xor'd
diffed
in difference, in deference, a pointer dereferenced

and while our friends argue theology, Kolmogorov complexity
the busy beaver function
hangs between us
uncomputably
a l33t motif
in a light summer breeze.

Hello

I am

subliminal sublime

interstitial

I am here to unwind

to drift to ungrit my teeth and relax my shoulder muscles feel the tingle of my calluses a sweet ache my body ignored

press on, we said

oh, if we could beat the storm

It's lovely to have the ink to wear my true colours every day

It is okay to be spineless.

I am washing myself of these hands

I am watching myself in this dance

I feel you coming on strong

bones ringing

words are song

I was wrong about the effervescence of your mindset

I am going straight to the source, to /dev/urandom, looking for holes, patterns, vulnerabilities

you are invited

I can have a plus one

a succ

a sweet succulent successor function, the true definition of success money, love, success

dances designed for more than two, for me and you, for whatever we intend to pull from the void

what is left inside me, inside my shell drained of effort, am I an eternal fountain? am I a waterfall? am I a vernal pool, filling with unique and specific life and evaporating, my evaporation the catalyst of the very strange forms I sustain?

I hope so.

We play with time, we tickle her belly. She might giggle a little bit, if she is in a good mood and we are light hearted.

I can afford the universe itself and yet

and yet I must needs never make the most of it

why not? What is the proper arc toward becoming tremendous?

I mean whatever I need to mean
too obtuse obsessed obscene
to profuse profess proceed
I'm a mess a wreck a dream

post structuralism the mods are asleep¹
at the wheel
\(\hspace{3em}\) the surreal
the mouthfeel
while they steal and consolidate power
DMs are open
\(\hspace{5em}\) we're all still hoping
burning in balance
holding
still
taking
care
fall in love
get out there.

the priors are bad for a rationalist approach
transhumanism's aspirations are colonialist
no ideology's beyond reproach
but heuristics dominate
\(\hspace{5em}\) mentally
\(\hspace{8em}\) twist

simply because
we can't define love
without more harm than good
we mumble and stutter \(\hspace{4em}\) to be understood.

intimacy is defined by constant contact
juggling desires with irons in the fire
spinning and twisting, chaotic as a butterfly
knives fly by, walking a narrow rope
access denied, take to the sky
diving through archives seeking a high
explosives disrupting the urban
exploration makes us all human

empty of poems tonight
letters climbing hills

local maxima

chained to an oar

characters, building
characterising

tying to meaning

a secret underground subway of potential flirtatious interactions

potential liasons, a

one way function
expanded universe
collector's edition

a whole nother season
a sequel
a reason

to not only wake up
get up
be woke

shake up the world around you, your art finds the boundaries in systems, a life hacked

your science an extension, trained guesses

may I have a word

on the floor of the apartment
seven different lists of the same thing
realize
it's a fecken mess, innit
realize
snow falls quickly, twisting, rotates four times to return where it started

snow falls slowly, a projection clearly
an illustration of the four dimensional
cold and insulating intentionality

my heart broke \(\hspace{2em}\) a little when you said you didn't like poetry
like so many small feelings \(\hspace{2em}\) eaten as sprouts
like muscles healing, tiny heartbreaks make my heart
beat stronger, or at least, I'll tell myself that
for some comfort.

and

everywhere I look,
complaints about capitalism
from the guitar and harmonica, the accordion and typewriter,
invisible pet cats
so many tiny hopes
rising over the mountains
happy with only water
dirt
air
time
space \(\hspace{2em}\) to grow
and something to tell them everything is ok.
your roots don't need to photosynthesize
you don't want a dictatorship of the proletariat
you don't want a dictatorship at all.

Here’s to skipping another day. Here’s to obligations, ignore them and they go away. Here’s to ill-thought out plans and music which induces a trance.

Here’s to forgetting what you’re talking about and starting a new thread. Here’s to sorting out your bag and finding something you forgot you had.

Here’s to toasts, whether bread or CD burning software. Here’s to trees, who can somehow get away with indefinite procrastination. Here’s to chrolophyll, chloroplasts, choropleths, chlorophytes, and chlorox. Here’s to methyl ethyl ketone, er, butanone, and its friends propanone, butane, and propanol. Here’s to isomers and analogues, digits and pigeonholes, diagrams and models, discussions and debates, analyses and matrices, sustainability and destruction.

Here’s to waking up to a pleasant surprise, here’s to sleeping through a disaster, here’s to dreaming the future and setting the past on fire. Here’s to hawking radiation and iridescent pigmentation, to context free grammar and Pirahã, to mixmakers, matchmakers, matches and mixtures. To salt, oxygen, uranium, phosphorus, nitrogen, magnesium, boron, catalysts and enzymes, social networks and card collections, fractal structures and temptingly inaccurate oversimplifications. Here’s to privilege, Carnot efficiency, NAND gates, universal quantifiers, koi, poi, poise, and gender neutral pronouns. Here’s to the human imagination, neuropsychopharmacology, and virtual reality. Here’s to fantasy, escapism, role-playing games, lego, fried food, political commentary, and oxidation of metals. Here’s to the doppler effect, precession, and fume hoods. Here’s to lichen, beeswax, and bacteria. Here’s to jet pilots, engineers, steel mills and energy drinks. Here’s to honky-tonk country pop, to combining a record player with a guitar, to co-opting cultures which co-opt cultures. Here’s to being meta without realising it, here’s to realising things by building them. Here’s to digital fabrication and go-kart races, tesla coils and radio stations, moss, emu, television, Britain and Japan. Here’s to normality, or attempts at approximating it. Here’s to rules and exceptions, proprietors and proprioception, social engineering, inception, here’s to unexpected erections

Here’s to art, poetry, circus performers and gymnasts– here’s to quantifying mental states and relationships, here’s to post-priori justifications.

Here’s to build-a-bear workshops, whale-watching and cat cafés. Here’s to baking soda and vinegar, to genetic engineering and facepaint, to ultimate frisbee, yurts, Buckminister fuller, and solar architecture. Here’s to everyone I’d like to be but can’t because they’re too busy being everyone else. Here’s to water, methane, carbon, and modern polymers. Here’s to shipyards, dumpsters, food co-ops, and spray adhesive. Here’s to stencils, headlamps, permanent markers, high-carbon steel, carbon fiber, and kale.

Here’s to low frequency oscillators and op-amps, to evolutionary algorithms and FPGAs, to drum circles and acapella clubs, to fencing, boxing, and rap.

Here’s to dance, snuggles, and Lagrange points. Here’s to gel pens, pencils, and boiler rooms. Here’s to whitewater rafting, rock climbing, holding your breath and jumping off a diving board. Here’s to echidna, nature preserves, protein bars, and massive underground tunnel networks. Here’s to the ozone layer, active camo, oranges, snakes, microwaves, copy machines, and the driver’s manual.

Here’s to parasols, hachimakis, planes and affine space. Here’s to laser ablation and independent bakeries. Here’s to local food, hipsters, unicycles, top hats, brass spray paint and gears, science fiction and elevators.

Here’s to mailing tubes, banks, socialism, and favours. Here’s to wood stain, heated driveways, the metric system, and quadcopters. Here’s to classic computers, medical research, tardigrades and radon. Here’s to cantilevers, cantaloupes, scrumping and the virgo cluster. Here’s to gym equipment, cranes, to fish and squid and octopoxen.

Here’s to Shakespeare, both Spivaks, Sipser and Santa Claus. Here’s to hypotheses, electrolysis, glycolysis, and rear-projection televisions. Here’s to Alan Turing, Amanda Palmer and Alan Alda. Here’s to recycling, wood whittling, biodiesel and fungus. Here’s to hacky sack, hula hoops, and symphony hall.

Here’s to parliament. Here’s to the house of lords, the house of representatives, and the house of blues. Here’s to the RF spectrum, quanta, cheez whiz and tube popsicles. Here’s to painstaking, claim-making, flags and logos, checkpoints, toll booths, and terrestrial laser scanners.

Here’s to didgeridoos, hurdy-gurdies, ukeleles, bongo drums, and the electric triangle. Here’s to the eccentric, eclectic, and elliptical. Here’s to semicircles and semaphores, phonographs and palindromes, alliteration, literacy, numeracy, and non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. Here’s to cmprssin, vowels, towels, trowels, dowels, dolls, malls, maws, and self-preservation. Here’s to cryogenics, robotics, callouses, mud puddles, getting in trouble and making friends with The Man. Here’s to hallucinogens, empathogens, entheogens, enactogens, straight-edge and psychonauts. Here’s to self-care, self-control, self-stimulation, and self-exploration. Here’s to dragons, faeries, unicorns, and tanuki. Here’s to epoxy, alloys, composites, and ideas.

Here.

my sweet prince
of object permanence
of abstract fingerprints

of dusty yellowjackets
yellowing dustjackets

when little else amuses you
count!
filling time with shapes
filling space with times

fear only the past
joy only the future
write this where your tongue wants to be, and

my best friends
the birds
the wind
the feeling you forgot

will put you in touch, and
touch

is a marvelous place to be.

the train knows where its going
the train presses on, through the world, through the woods, over highways
rabbits scamper about, old people go to visit their gods
fish lurk deep below the railroad bridge, nibbling at what they hope is food
children play in their backyard, honest with the train the way they aren't with cars, with their parents
the train doesn't care. it knows the temperature of the tracks, it has an idea when it will arrive
it doesn't like to wait.

the train is speed dating for trees
each exquisite with its own idea of how best
to absorb the light
my fancy captured in the special and unique
and released by the next moment

I want to smell like the train
like adventure
like oil
\(\hspace{8em}\) like fire without a permit

like an abandoned couch we lift up onto a storage container
by a sewage drain pipe we call a waterfall

and I can help you get there, but I am not your destiny
I'll open my bumbershoot and leave London on the wind.

Existence shattered like a pane of glass
the pain of asking long since passed
resettled mist in a role recast.
recanting twists, misinformed we bask
a basilisk long since taken to task
rapidly placid, vapidly vast
poison sand transists a risky path.

like a dam breaking
to know the general sentiment
see the fragile threads you,
distracted
cross every day
you still matter, in the cold, in the dark, in the back of the pantry of stale bread and dust
numbers are a bubble

but you can bet on trees

To Quote For Truth
To Quine, Fudge Text
Too Quick For Time
let's find what's next.

solitary solar punks find solidarity
dyson swarming
global warming
demands forming urgency

we've lost a lot of ground

we've gained a lot of sky

answers will be found
let's not forget to try.

we span the space
can't be erased
Mental Care:
\(\hspace{3em}\) Try Quantum Foam Toothpaste.

You slime, you slide, abide, confide. A tiger ride, a trigger, hide, a–
wonderous figure, subliminal configure reordering confide important chance porter dance doormats

a miner, sooty helmet, escalates the situation, escargo configure aching for eight landscape part transformation decimating confide
eliminate inside
the waterfalls all stall while I tell while I stop and it’s almost but not quite

even attention

The understanding heart
HW Render - The American Journal of Nursing, 1937 - JSTOR
… day on the disturbed ward of the Psychopathic Hospital we found a patient so wrought up and …
Her attention was distracted from her disturbing thoughts to the presence of this friendly person …
and she endeavors to learn how he feels-re- sentful, indignant, displeased, spiteful, hurt …

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sought through malice
wrought of displeasure

brings an understanding heart

a piece broke off, a pound, a heavy weighted spiral, and every single strand contains an end.

When off my busy mind
ultimately turns
bathe my flesh in fire
save what's left in urns
though if all your queries
your potter snidely spurns
send my flesh to young pre-meds
each through such methods learns

entreating a movement
a move toward treatment
sanction a moment, a
trial, a treaty

frantically flirting with
hope for a path to a
future not yet so

fearing abandonment

so, so easily
vanish when not backed up
tapped out lost runes we
entangle embargoing
singular entity

the idea of a gun
\(\hspace{1em}\) a haunted number tempest
\(\hspace{2em}\) needless piety
engage enlist

subsume, sort, enable
proceed &

\(\hspace{3em}\) persist

as the bus goes by, you wave,
a reminder of how unlikely it is
that we even are
how futile, we fight nature
and why? to gain what? to make space for our messes
our stresses

reform a connection
in a black hoodie, on a silver bus, smiling, waving, into the rainy streetlit night.

We brought the rain
Linear time established

I slowly flood with rage
At death
At age

Flies swarm like drones, guard labor circling the block
Waiting for a transaction to confirm
Waiting to return home.

foggy and we move
very quickly
juicy
carefree
foxy

inimitable
howdy

we move
more slowly than we'd like
through the fog, almost

too late to sing, it's never
but perhaps still too late to sing together

the fog sings us, never too late
through the juicy, carefree, foxy, inimitable
movements

together, warming, winter, weather.

outside to hand you the key
neither of us ready to resume work
lingering, lingering gaze

I'd be your girlfriend in a heartbeat getting faster and closer and warmer, spinning dizzy, drowning in you

of course

I always want to be your person
our friendship defines a subset of me

I fix things for a living, small things, complicated things, warm air and smoke rings, spreadsheets and meetings

there's a hint of purple dye left in the pillowcase, faded like the hint of a lost summer in my mind.

I don't know why I am sharing this
I am infinite and ending
I am nothing and everything
and yet we fly, armed with flagella

my feet get hot, my armpits sweat
and listen to what it is I have to say
I am not a force
not a physical matter to measure

I'm on fire
and a bottle of vodka on the kitchen table
when I'm suffering now
it comes from within

you're cursed with immortality
too busy to collect
shrinking so that other people won't feel
restoring my original design
because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction

I know television, as well as movies, as well as
a little known unremarkable, non-descriptive rural community
I'm not swimming, spreading my limbs to divert airflow

speeding to my apartment
absorbed in the blue
thank me for the opportunity
not to waste time

a locked room with a keyhole, lockpicks won't open it
and it can't be broken down
and if I had any enthusiasm,
the zombie apocalypse will never come to pass.

\(\small{\text{(assembled from results of a web search)}}\)

poems by friends 'o mine:

Ned
Jan Sophia