Windowless, shadowless, fluorescent a room and schoolyard scent. A lecture on earth's composure rumbled on as thunder sounded when I need not know where my toes were. Terrestrial topography in the row marked 2 or 3. The hierarchy of "figured out" and inane diplomacy, but I was feeling fine. I was sitting alone and still and looking at the morning faces. I left spaces left and right so I could swallow my mind and wrap up tight in the vacuum allowed. The collided waveforms hit my selective ears. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week. My knees are weak and I'm writing the words I don't know how to speak and writing the rhythm, the subject I so often treat poorly, write off as a cliche archetype made for the gullible, penned by the phony. Yet I can't wait. A nervous anxious wonder I can't shake, like a beautiful sun gliding over a closing wake with the wind on its back and a ship to take.

We revel in the artist's gaze.
See us, artist, we say.
Scale us in the geometry of your sight.
Objectify us, break us down
To our vital light,
The zero shade of being,
Our essential black and white.

But what if the figure becomes the ground?
Does the artist’s vision ever come to rest?
Does she halt the eye’s restless turning,
Instead hunger to be seen?  Fathomed?  Expressed
In basic hues, simplified, resolved,
Into the object deconstructed, the mystery solved?

Spotlight and camouflage,
Revelation and disguise:
The chiaroscuro of the artist’s eyes.
Then where does beauty reside?
In our eyes, beholders,
Invited in yet held outside?
Or in the starlight, sunlight,
Lamplight as it plays  
On the seer seen in beauty’s gaze?

The Strid, at ground level, seems
A calm stream. A peaceful bath.
None foresee being swept into
My roaring depths, trapped under current and crag

I want to merit photographs, but
I am midday with overcast skies
The light isn’t quite right, the
Scenery you see seems trashed

I picture myself behind the wheel of
The steel frame of a 1967 Chevy Impala. Black and
Worn down from its time in domesticity
Its escapee driving fast, kicking up dust, so
He can never look back
Praying the engine doesn’t clunk or thrash

My heart is the library of Alexandria
Endless tomes taken from open trade
Open to few, elites within not knowing they’re kindling
An empire of knowledge gone to waste in
A night of passion and fire

My mind lives in Constantinople
Unbroken walls build in fear of failure
I am the fire in that city, uncontrolled
I consume myself from within, and
My walls crumble
Prized relics of pride swiftly settle
Kicking up dust at the bottom of the river
The bosun yells “man overboard!”
Too late; they’re trapped
Under current and crag.

Sometimes I wanna die
But then I remember all the movies
Series, music, visual arts, people
I haven't met yet

The coke bottles on the weekends
The iced teas before classes
The energy drinks at 2 a.m.
I know I'm made of water
My organs, my tissues
My voice is a liquid
Which evaporates in my throat
That flows away through my eyes, my ears
I can dissolve so easily
But I can also turn rigid, hard
Disguised in a solid state, icy

The rapids fall
In the depths of the night
By myself, I turn into the purest fountain

˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜­˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
(portuguese translation)

Às vezes dá vontade de morrer
Daí me lembro dos filmes
Das séries, músicas,
Artes visuais,
Pessoas
Que eu ainda preciso conhecer

A coca-cola dos fins de semana
Os chás gelados antes das aulas
Os energéticos às 2 da manhã
Eu sei que eu sou de água
Meus órgãos, meus tecidos
A minha voz é um líquido
Que evapora na garganta
Que sai nos olhos, nos ouvidos
Me desfaço tão fácil
Mas também me torno rígido, gélido
Me desfarço de sólido

Cachoeiras caem
Nas profundezas da noite
Sozinho, sou a fonte mais pura

Daughter of a rocket scientist 
son of a nuclear engineer
and they begat a son

a boy
too starry-eyed to question the stars—
the way they hang in space, the fusion
that keeps them burning brightly,
or how to launch an object past them—
more concerned with the constellations
of perfect freckles found on his beloved's shoulders

a boy 
too enthralled with Existence
and describing it in artful words
to contemplate its composition
or to ponder Existence's place
on Other Worlds

a boy 
enraptured with the Changing of the Seasons—
photosynthesis and 
chloroplasts and 
planetary tilt?
Irrelevant

a boy 
who'd rather write of Love
than consider its chemical makeup
or wonder how or why it is
who'd prefer to write of leaves
dancing spirals in the breeze 
than aerodynamics and 
air resistance and
gravitational pull

a boy 
who sometimes stops 
and only ponders Science
concerning his Genetics
and wonders where it all was lost.