I don't know what this means but I mean it

I cannot seem to say exactly
what I mean
or what I want to mean
I think
It's like delirium came
and whisked me into it's
happy caravan
though really it's neither happy or sad
That analog was bad
I am slowly unraveling into
a pile of non-poetic brown yarn
woven of a strange lack of basic knowing

Devastation

I am awake for months now
It is too painful for me to sleep
For love in all its subtleties
Has gutted me and left me breathless
upon your altar

A poem and a strategy

So, I've recently been a bit torn about posting my poetry here, as I am getting more serious about getting published. What I have decided to do is to post only those pieces that I feel wouldn't fit anywhere else. To be clear, this does not mean that I'm only going to post my 'bad' poetry here, but rather that I will simply be posting poems that don't feel to me like they belong in any journal for one reason or another. So without further ado, here's a poem on the Drake Equation:

The math is simple
The number of possible civilizations in the galaxy
is the number of new stars per year (big)
divided by the number that have planets(small)
then the number that could have life(just the possibility)
then the number that will actually have life(the reality of it)
then of those, the few that gain sentience (we are aware)
of these, the ones that can transmit
and last, multiply by their lifespan.
The universe is at least 14 billion years old.
There are billions of new stars every year.
We have been sentient for a million years.
We have been listening for 60.
But in all this numerical babble,
I learned something greater than science;
something as important as the knowledge that the soul
is infinite and immeasurable, and applied over all universes.
the point of the equation is not that the universe is very big
the point is that we are not
that life as we know it-
self-defining, self-organizing life-
is rare and significant.
The point is not to waste it.

Complementarity Pt. 9

Whose voices are these rising from the sea?

Are they refractions of the words we throw?

Are they new voices from new horizons?

Are they ancient sunken kingdoms?

Whose voice is this, coming forth without accent?

Is it an émigré who sings in this catholic timbre?

A new savage with utterly new eyes?

Is it an unsuspected familiar?

Knowing notes which were not learned in classrooms?

Whoever he is, he is loved briefly

All men take him into themselves

Even you let his spirit wash you

You welcome him from his curious journey

And hope for his tales to impart society to you

This voice is the same with which I at times speak

Not American, not of Niger, not of Samarkand

  of the universe, of real

Complementarity Pt. 6

In the morning I begin an education

When at length I am awoken

After basking unfettered

I, Homo Naturalis

Against the stark moon

Am all alone

Companion of the stars

Likewise oscillating, differing slightly in luminance

Greatly in ancientness

And the wood whispers a vague rumor

 about the city

and the city creates a susurrus about the wood

and I alone under the night sky hear them all

and see the stars with ancient, wizened faces

as they chuckle softly at the ignorance of such temporary things

Complementarity Pt. 5

The following is the fifth part of Complementarity. Enjoy and comment:

Is my poem too long?

Then my poem is too long

The journey from me to you

Is immense and filled with freshly shifted eyes

Have you left your body behind yet?

Have you outgrown its conceits and melancholia yet?

Have you dug into my poems to dig me out into your mind’s eye?

I am imponderable there, loose in the rapidly bloviating forest

 

A Backbone by Night

I've recently been working on a cycle of poems, entitled Of the Women. The following is the first piece,A backbone by night:

I sit idly on the grass
And watch the night sky reflecting on your back
Your blue back under the moon
I watch the exploding universe upon your narrow frame
As you exhale, nebulas collapse in on one another
Take in breath and restore the shape of things
As long as your spine is blue
I know the safety of all life
And can stare at the terrific expanse of your ribcage
For as long as the Night lasts

I haven't quite figured this newest one out yet, but it's been a while due to some yes-inducing occurrences, so I figured I'd throw it up.

drawing by Julia Randall via booooooom.com

Oh the brilliant bubble of space
Leaking out of God’s gaping mouth
The shimmering spit bubble of the universe
His crimsoning tongue on the verge of destroying it
Earth from the other side
She leans into it
She wants to French kiss it
She wants the saliva of the Lord
All over her lip
destroying the shimmering veil projecting space
just past the lips where God met Earth
and life passionately gives itself to higher power
the light harmonizing expectorating membrane of space

Priam

The old half-eaten tamarind of a man
Stands in the mirror watching
His skin sag in the breeze
His neutral-colored remembrances
Are of little comfort now
“...but my was I a sight to behold”
His poetry hangs in the air like a vacuum
Nature spares him this customary judgment
For a pity it keeps unpleasantly
“I really could have been something if...”
Each new haiku runs and
strands itself amid the crowd
as it knows itself unfulfilled like their maker
stacking and piling in the mirror
There is no shining city in the glass
“I guess I’ll go back to bed”

Mastectomy

As she stares at the bottle of pills
The thing that hurts is not the cancer or the cure
But the insistence that a woman is made entirely of two breasts
She bites an apple more sensuously than ever before