my wasted lunch hour...

...as drawn with microsoft paint.

in a cartoon blink

It starts here and ends there with no between. A swing, a
dodge and the sweat drops that shoot from invisible pores

in our hero's pale pink forehead. Fountain Water.

Connect the dots. It's sudden when you slow it down. One cell
then another and a slight augment in the position of my jaw.

I'm saying something, can't you hear me? Watch.

It was Einstein who fanned his fingers before his eyes and broke down
time, divided the swish of a skirt and the arc of fountain water.

Connect the dots, don't blur them.

Big and Long

The commerical on PBS (for PBS)
says the universe has no edge and
no center, and I can accept this, I suppose,
as I accept the fact that those
three hariy lobes I see drawn out on computer
paper (by the computer) are, in fact,
composed of a line infinitely long
(the Mandelbrot set)

I was taught to believe that
the universe is infinitely large, and always
thought that if that were true then every-
thing must exist somewhere, though
I may have picked that up
some place (Douglas Adams) but I
still think it's true. And I
wonder sometimes if somewhere in that
set, traced out along that infinite line,
my face, self-similar: two ears
and a chin.

It must be,
we all exist somewhere, in the universe,
in that line, and sometimes I wonder
what it means that the one infinity
(mandelbrot set) is contained within the
other (universe), and that here I sit,
contemplating it all, another infinity
(me), and what if someone is watching the one
infinity (universe) like we're watching
the other (set).

Sit and wonder,
Wonder and sit,
What else can a body do?

What else can a body do?

∞

∞
The length of my arm
contains as many points
as the length of this world.
You can run a ruler across
any star, moth, galaxy, hip
and find the same thing over
and over.
But then, you know how
Mathematicians talk,
their dark hope for the world.

Still, it isn’t an impossible
thing to understand. This isn’t
just Zeno’s mystery or Kepler’s solution.
The 2nd law of Planetary Motion
does not depend on what
cannot be imagined.

Twist a rubber band
and you have it.

Anticipate a new thing.

Say something you can never
take back.

infinity.
what more
can one say?

for people with time on their hands

I've been reading Daivd Foster Wallace's book "Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity." I can't recommend it, as the book will cause you to stay up nights wondering how, if a second of time can be infinitly divided, you'll ever make it to morning. BUT, I do think we should all post (that is, write) poems about infinity. Who's up for it?

It worked!

I'm blogging! I'm blogging!

Haiku while walking to work

River's moss,
green in summer,
now white with frost.

something new and untitled from me

Just open, the electric door hangs
offline, fuse-blown, but still
a border unlatched
between this room and the next. No one
invited you to notice, you just
did as if you couldn’t control
yourself, as if the door commanded
a gravity the velocity
of your thoughts could not
escape, were caught by, made
its satellite. But it’s only
a door and that is only
a shadow – the shadow. The
shadow of your neighbor stealing
light from the braided oval
rug, from the dark wooden floor, but
she’s giving some of it back, she’s
wearing a pink blouse and it’s
giving itself to the ceiling
and now the room is
steeped in that hue, or is it her
perfume, no wait
that’s your perfume. It’s your
blouse too and your shadow, the only
one in this room except for the electric
door still choking light
back from that
other room, beyond.

A sound like your footsteps, like
your neighbor’s pert cough, curls out
from the floorboards in a room
older than this but no less finished,
or broken, or useful.