Her blood is cyanide
She cannot seem to hide
She is light as helium
She's strong as aluminum
She is graphite carbon
As subdued as boron
Abundant as hydrogen
But toxic as nitrogen
She's precious as platinum
Her skin is thallium
In her lungs there is radon
She is as rare as xenon
Helpful as iodine
Whose life is astatine's
She is soft as lithium
Her eyes are beryllium
There is nothing I can do
Already the tumor grew

Without my ******* Jack secret
decoder ring I am lost
when I see a periodic table

I want to read left to right
for sense not status so
Nitrogen plus Oxygen means “No”

Phosphorus plus Sulfur makes “P.S.”
Lithium plus Beryllium spells “Likable Bear”
and so forth

Abbreviations of elements
that form the world I inhabit
appear disguised as aliens

their images blur from solid
to sinuous liquid
then gaseous vapor

as my eyes glaze
over into white noise
switch cognition channels

to resolve the mystery
contain the strangeness
in a familiar form

my numb brain grows a snout
starts poking around
like an old hound dog

snuffling autumn leaves
to decipher the scent of calculus
when the jonquils of high school algebra

have long since fallen
and confused summer yellows
with dew wrapped plums

quiet in dappled shade
plump and smooth
glistening soft

with promise
on a blue checked cloth
upon a worn oak table





(c) 2017-04-06

I wish I bled messy, black ink
to spill on your computer-coded fingers,
to blot out your terabyte blue eyes
from looking down at me.

I don't know differential calculus
and your ribs are engraved with unknowable equations
unsolvable to me, though I hear them
whispering to your heart in the quiet mornings.

I wish I understood the sighs
that fall from your logarithmic lungs
as they labor so intensely
to inflate your data ridden body.

Beryllium, Lithium, Nitrogen, Carbon
spill out of you like names of lost lovers
but they never sound so entrancing
on my own poetry-stained lips.

So while you chant them like worship
I'll be searching for divinity in those no-use words:
Incendiary, Ventricles, Ancillary, Phantasmagoria.
They fall from my mouth easier than even your name.

The deepness in your voice echoes outer space
Both vast and complicated
cold and distant
deep and so, so far away.

I can't touch you.

His eyes were like Labrodite
Beautiful in their own way
Cracks full of color
The only thing holding darkness at bay

His eyes were like Beryllium
The brightest blue I'd ever seen
Like blue skies on the horizon of tomorrow
The day leading you away from me

His eyes are like Sodalite
They come from both the darkness and the light
They are a muddled beautiful blue
The are unique just like you