How is it that space is infinite and still produces a vacuum? Normally, in order to create a vacuum you need to have an enclosed space. My answer will shock you, but I want you to attempt to answer this query.

My head
lays down over
the strong dynasty
your chest is.

I listen your heart,
arrhythmic,
reciting far away verses about
some kings without castles
nor titles.

Recklessly,
I fall asleep
inside the shelter
of your peaceful kingdom.

Your firmament applies me
a force, equal and opposite,
to the weight of my head,
full of semi precious stones
and keeps me
from falling.

I have never believed in the principles of physics because they do not apply to girls like me. Girls who disobey Newton's straight-mouthed rules with scarlet leaps of blind faith, girls with hopes soaring past our pastel heavens, never weighed down by any mystical force of gravity measured by dead men. The audacity of the physicist's rotten rules anchoring themselves into thick velvet skin-- as if to stifle the daydreams that keep twirling unpredictably even if acted upon by an unbalanced force. There is no way to silence my momentum, I will keep blooming-- slender hands outstretched toward the flickering sun, past all of the white numerical lies and formulaic cages that ache to confine me. What a perfect contradiction, that a soft-spoken girl can rise at the break of Einstein's miscalculated morning, illuminating the sky with the poetry of her defiance.

She, who loves gracefully without friction. She, whose bones cannot be broken by the laws of heat. She, who keeps herself warm when the cold mathematical wrath of their graves fails to keep her quiet.

Too bad we can't have both; but no,
it's one or the other. That's the trouble
with gods and Bosons: Admit one spirit
and you're no more than a Planck length
from the soul; measure position
and your divine momentum is gone,
deader than deadest poisoned cat.

If God (The God) were God He'd surely
be laughing as Jess & I tried to explain
quantum entanglement to each other,
several superpositions removed
from grasping how causality is preserved
and He'd muse at our suffering
surely in the face of First World fascism
and conspiratorial delight of ignorance;

Jesus would forgive us the hubris
of our collective sartorial malaise:
He'd writhe there painfully but patiently
on the cross w/ bile & gall while we
scrawled out partial differential equations
on the backs of cocktail napkins
and pretended that Lye groups—
sublime Algebra—hooked up
with the Standard Model in their own
perverted and slutty way—yes! Christ
would redeem the heretical pronouncements
on this dark matter,
spare us Pauline judgments—in abhorrent
reality of Time & Space (that's how
He rolls, I guess);

Zeus would just hurl thunderbolts, jealous
as ever of the atom smashers and
their Olympian acolytes' true lightning;

And what about Buddha? He's so full
of himself and compassion, bloated
by enlightenment he may not notice how
much rice we'd had on the way to these
Poison Arrow questions. So what's another
******* rebirth if it's needed? Too late
now for transcendence or transforming
Yoda-like into the Force;

Vishnu in Absolute Now says
Nothing's left but a bunch of fractured
protons, lovely alpha particles and
their asymmetric cousins, ever inward
but ever outward as cosmos go. One day
maybe we'll stop colliding and listen
to the whispers of Revelation—
that is, if we have the science, the ears
and the time.

We never asked of Einstein, sadly,
his divinity not being well established,
and his opinion souring
with the passing of the nonlinear,
the non-local and the grandiose—
Albert may still chime in though,
may be watching from that spooky
neighborhood universe
we seek but eternally dismiss.

We exist with the reality we have, not
the one we want. Until then it's an either/or
we must accept, because we are serious folk
who know gods and Bosons coexist only
among the superstitious and ill-informed.
You can't mince words when there are
so many atoms to split.

"
There are two kinds of space exploration:
One: you do with physics.
The other: you do with poetry.
The best astronauts I know
Defy gravity with words.
And it gives me hope
That maybe I don’t need
12,000 kilonewtons of sheer force
To know the universe where I belong.
"

Nothing exists except atoms and space,
And everything else is opinion,
Yet we can't determine the time of their place,
And relative distance between 'em.

If I could understand,
With a wave of my hand,
All that is, and what lies in between,
I probably wouldn't,
For fear that I couldn't
Unsee what what I might think obscene.

What if, for example,
I could indeed sample
All knowledge there is to be known?
Would I be enlightened,
Or possibly frightened?
Depressed once all mystery's gone?

If nothing exists except atoms and space,
And if everything else is opinion,
Then surely opinion's mankind's saving grace;
The source of the beauty within 'em

Alright so if you walk in to my bedroom
Pressed in the far corner is my bed
The headboard against the left wall
And, if you’re lying in it, the left side against an interior wall of the house
On that wall, the one on the left side of the bed, is a painting that came with the house
It is a long rectangle
I would describe its artistic value to be
Obligatory-Motel-Room-Painting
Blocks of color and weird squiggly bits
Not a picture of anything as much as a tool to bring the end table and the drapes together with the sheets
It’s on canvas stretched around a wooden frame
Nailed into the top bar of that wooden frame, dead center, is a jagged piece of metal
Normally you’d just put a nail in the wall and center that bit on the nail there you go
But this house has those paper thin walls that a nail with an ant on would tear through like Robin Hood sliding down a royal banner out a castle window with Maid Marion under his arm
So you can’t just hang the painting on the wall
But the room has crown molding
So instead of a nail in the wall
There is a string tied to the jagged piece of metal that extends up the center of the wall to the top
Where the string is tied to a fishing hook that is clipped into the crown molding

All this is to say is that sometimes when I lie in bed alone in my thoughts or otherwise
I reach my hand up and push the painting
Like a brother in the backseat being told not to touch his little sister I just kind of give it a poke
And I watch it swing from side to side
Or rather I expect to watch it swing like a marble on a string in a pendulum prop at a CEO’s desk
Side to side
Evenly
But it doesn’t
It wobbles while it sways
Like how at Disneyland
The Tea Cup Ride
The cups spin in circles while they go in circles
The painting wobbles while it sways back and forth
And I just don’t get it
Like I don’t understand at all
See I’m a smart conceited man so this gets on my nerves
And I know that if I spent my junior year of high school, first trimester, third period paying attention to Mrs. Whatever’s physics class instead of eating turkey sandwiches in the back with Sean then falling asleep that I’d be able to tell you exactly why this happens
But I got hungry at like 9am back then and I can’t help that I didn’t give a **** so I can’t explain it

And all of that was to say that I spend most of my daily energy trying to feel normal
Trying to be a sane person
Waking up all five days of the work week on time
Showering and brushing my teeth
Taking my kid to school and not forgetting to pick him back up after work
Not taking shots on my lunch breaks
And we all have the internet
And we all like poetry
So we’ve all heard the phrase “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting diff…and you know where I’m going
I’ve been in therapy since I was eight
Been on all the medications
Kept myself alive even when I didn’t want to
Worked a job long enough to get promoted a couple times
Live a real life, with real consequences
And every once in a while if I’m not looking too hard
I start to feel like a normal
Like a sane person
Like someone who is of his right mind
And then all of it gets undone by a ****** painting hanging on a string in my bedroom
Because I know what it means about me to push that painting and expect it swing every time and to every time watch in shock as it wobbles while it sways

Come the auroras and infinite landscapes –
     Tangents wrought outright constants,
     Parallels perched perpendicular outrights,

          So to call your ellipse,
          When the orbit’s outstretched
          Landing meetings where we’d at least
          Learn to alter tomorrow.

It’s stellar silly, and paths primordial,
     Leaving my layovers for the trials
     And abandoned, the moon’s to forever follow you;

          So to composed and formulae proofed
          Come the time you mother said,
          "He’s just a coma
          And dust best left forgotten."

Quit draggin’ me to space baby.

Thinking at the speed of light must be like –
Touching a popsicle under typhoid’s fever.
Could it be the scent of sorrow for someone else?
An error buried but burrowed? Borrowed?
I’d imagine, “it,” a bird at my sill
And resulting boot through the air;
Broken before(s), bludgeoned becomes,
So cracks the smile, so cracks the mirror,
So breaks and so becomes,
The speed of light.

When we've turned to past
And all our memories turn
To vicious whirlwinds
: Untouchable
Aftermaths of aftermaths of flames,
Of which we were the arsonists--
Even with our senses impaired--
I'll still come back to you.
.