Every lil student knows
Velocity is relative
It takes two to compose
And means nothing on ones own
Vanishes without a trace
There's no fast and no slow
When drifting in space
But gravity pulls us closer
And lonely bodies move to others
Lets them know velocity
Mirrored in their passing brothers
And **** if that's not me
And why I slip people like Ali
I don't want to let those mirrors
Reveal painful truths about me
I don't blame them for it either
It's not their fault that mine are there
But I see them in their eyes
And alone they disappear

The kinetic energy
contained in this resting pencil
will soon be let out
in accelerated shouts and whispers
and the odd word of wisdom.
Just wait.
You'll see.

If
my velocity is negative on
paper, am I going the wrong
direction? If I am accelerating in the
opposite direction of my destination, (if
I slow down I mean), is it good
or bad?
How about when a train is positively speeding at a high
velocity towards
me accelerating positively
in my direction Do
I run?

Last November I said Time Is Dumb
and you said it sounded poetic and
remembering this made me sick to my stomach
because last November you didn’t wear a watch,
the tick of a clock didn’t sound like a dripping faucet
and each turn of a calendar wasn’t an alarm without a snooze.

We had all of us in front of us for the taking
but we threw ourselves into the wind
which took you to warm arms and me to cool kitchen and bathroom floors
and this started the clocks, which haven’t stopped.

I used to count back to everyday in our demise
and when you asked if I still count I said of course
but a second after I realized I don’t
because it doesn’t matter how many days are behind us
or how many are in front of us
because velocity measures distance over time,
it measures the rate at which an object changes it’s position
and as the seasons have  changed so have we.

We meet in spring and fell in fall,
went on wandering winter walks as snow lightly fell,
in spring we sprung our clocks ahead to meet our end
summer was sliced in separation and sadness,
fall was truth and clocks so fast they broke
winter will be wagering within ourselves
I don’t know what spring will bring besides swimming in distance
and in thoughts of what to do with our time.

There are all these clichés about love and timing
but what if you were not suppose to be
my first love, we both had lessons to learn
you needed to flesh out that surface love and
I needed to rebuild walls before inviting you in.

Times isn’t dumb, we are foolish for letting it control us
but we may have learned this a year too late
for we’ve had our distance and we’ve had our time
and they’ve canceled each other out to create now
and it may be all we have.

I’m obsessed
with counting.
Even the 47 steps
to my English class.
When that became
boring I created a way
to document, not  
time, but distance.
And 47 turned to 54.

681 days since I
cut 11 inches
off my hair.

359 days since he
said Keep in touch
when the last
thing I wanted
to do was touch him.

319 days since she
didn’t text back and
then 294 days later
moved 1,731 miles
away and by now I
wouldn’t even know
where to send a letter.

One day
I decided to get
another haircut,
but I no longer bother
to know the measurements
of the pieces that
are only going to be
swept away.