My Bookshelf

is mobile and not docile,
it self-rearranges,
and that isn't a metaphor,
my books dance like the waves of prose contained inside them,
they move as radically as the thoughts of Deutsch or Dawkins,
bouncing with every bump of the road,
sometimes falling off the shelf as if my Yosemite Bigwall book is demanding ascension.

Or as if that book from my love was willing me to think of her,
to give her a call where she wouldn't answer again,
and I would leave a message even though…well you know…it’s 2018.

I built these shelves with my father,
he's in there – his busted thumb and all the errors
we made.
That we made after I saw those old westfalias,
I trusted that German utility.
We hacked and refined and specified the space to make it somewhat me proof,
no hinges or complications, no doors,
nothing fancy,
just some boards cut with care while I reminded him that I also know how to use the table saw,
but he so viscerally flowed into the craft of it all that I would just stand aside him watching
with respect at the efficiency of blade and movement.

There's the new section we built last Christmas break,
It's already ingested some of my used math books,
I worry about their spines,
anymore falls will leave them destined for an unstable amount of packing tape.
There’s also the shelf over my bed with the books friends have lent or unintentional given me.

and then there's those books with a self similarly to reality,
containing a reflexive reflection to nature in printed pages,
containing explicit explanations of earthly bodies written by sages,
Feynman's there angelically flapping in every page,
his joy threatening the wood his work rests in,
his eternal radiance jiggling so chaotically it’s barely contained in its ink.

And there's me below them in bed playing with pixels at 4am,
just willing the day to come so the sunshine can fill the leaves.

Ripples

I have been surviving being dragged to the shore
In this fight, this acted out play, of my cast of internal actors,
Of discreet thespians violently waking up to my senses,
By a child in a alarm clock costume.
This awakening has happened so many times my back is calloused from the sand and cement of the road that I come back to consciousness at.

My head – this theater ran by robots,
This automated drama that feels lost and out lines,
the shuffle goes on,
facial contortions bring no continuity till the final act.

In a recursive rain scene which starts a fire,
Caused by the simulacrum of synapses that short circuit,
snapping carbon and oxygen into reunion,
and then comes the flood of the fire sprinklers which wash me away again,

into the sea,

Where so many bodies lie broken and disconnected from their breathing.

I sink again and attempt to remember the contrarian boy who is curious enough question at the water's edge.
Hoping he'll pay attention to his senses so I'll be saved from drowning again in that deep pond mindlessness, of apathy,

Saved for another moment where I can play my part.

Unfurl your self-consciousness and step over the fulcrum, that tipping point so you can lift yourself into ultra openness, seek to see the jungle of every possible operation, take stabs into the constraints, and watch as nature bleeds beauty but does not degrade into anything less than it ever was, still as explicable – still explainable.

Huntress of the Ephemeral

For Amy D.

Catcher of infinitesimal interactions,

gatherer of aesthetic,

stab my heart,

fly away to islands as irresistible as sugar,

search for the solution,

delete my mental pollution,

clean the air, scrub the molecules,

rearrange the contents of my lungs,

displace the longing in my heart,

find a place to put this passion,

make it gravitate like that interstellar asteroid.

If only we could capture it and

see its story,

see the possibility of our reunion,

these strange lost rocks I stumble over are starting to slip from my hands,

this granite dome descends into rock slides,

It carries me down into the Merced,

out into the Pacific,

to set sail into the ocean and into your bed,

risking the sharks and swift currents, 

ripe with enumerable emotions I can’t manage,

I distract myself with infinities,

you make life.

I cherish the thoughts of you in my head.

Slowly Sinking Submarine

We’re like people on a huge, well-designed submarine, which has all sorts of lifesaving devices built in, who don’t know they’re in a submarine. They think they’re in a motorboat, and they’re going to open all the hatches because they want to have a nicer view. – David Deutsch

Moving a moment out of frame,

out of attention,

in a critical carving of a knife intended for suicide.

We will die either way

somewhere down the line, 

when the pressure gets too powerful,

and the oxygen cuts out

in our vessel we all captain.

Swallowing a blade into a vein,

so we can have some semblance

of control.

We the people, in entertaining disguises,

are well removed while our bombs go off above, 

before our distinctions are made

of who you are,

philosopher king and captain of only your mind,

          although perfect in its universality.

The global community's eardrums break,

by letting loose the valves

for these ventriloquists,

our puppet opportunists,

suffering because we had drawn deep lines in public sand.

We sit with shut eyes in front of a glorious mirror,

in a trance,

before the answers we dare not accept:

That we must draw these daggers away from self,

Only I,

this focus

on fun,

distrust all otherwise.

Or keep walking silently,

sinking while being subtlety stabbed,

suffering with ears full of water,

coasting unconsciously downwards with windows drawn open.

We can be the space arising,

surrounded by impeccable sustenance,

all our possibilities, 

as we float

towards open-ended brilliance,

of all that can be,

joyous above cool seas,

because we fought

to freely feel the breeze.

Elevated Dust

Vibrant oil drains erratic

spreading unmagic.

My brain                in moving frame

darting                          charting

in isolation,

breeding new burdens of beauty,

new behaviors.

New ideas

of how to live

that hang off a sopping wet brush,

dying the canvas,

depicting dead ends cut.

Asking how to truly live?

A nobility to give,

my hand making strokes in sand,

where each grain of my being

aligns with causality.

Morality:

What to do in all this connectivity,

with a supreme sense of all the possibilities

of all the elegant structures that we could come to be.