Subway Stop Memories: Poetry Edition

Never Called

December 13, 2010
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I used to listen to your heart,
listen to the way it beat,
listen to the way it spoke to me
as if I were the only one who could understand
I was your biggest fan
I spun in circles for you
even when you held me upside down
instead of close and true
there wasn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for you
but it was never enough
and you were never all that tough
only hard to motivate
always had me standing right outside your gate
my foot prints are a permeant part of your welcome mat
but I’m never coming back
unless its in the form of a dream
well, more like a nightmare
but they aren’t to-be-taken-light-mares
no, they are wake-me-in-the-middle-of-the-night-mares
the I-don’t-want-to-wake-up-without-in-my-sight-mares
I’m the minor demon on your shoulder when you wake
the cold sweat that makes you quake
I am the hit you take
and every promise that you break
I am your bad side
every part of you that you wish would die
but we both know you’ll never forget
you always were one to regret
because you never listen to you heart,
listen to the way it beats
listen to the way it speaks
its song is only noise to you
you’ll never learn what it means to be true
i should have never called you my boo.


Star Stuff

December 12, 2010
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1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10
The first semester of my third year of college
was the worst of my four years of undergraduate studies
I spent eight weeks a with a fever that wouldn’t let me sleep
followed by four weeks in a cast that made work hard to complete
and ten weeks falling back in and out of love with someone who only knew how to leave
1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10

On my first day of astronomy we were asked to write down a question we wanted answered over the course of the class. Well my question was…

I was really quite nervous to have my question answered. I had romanticized this fact that I was putting out there to be debunked, if the answer were “no” I was afraid the optimist in me would simply die.

Does the gold on Earth really come from the stars?

Please just say yes, I begged in my head because if it’s true that means when I was a child wishing for love on a star that the stars had already heard my plea because they had already created the gold for me. It was already here, which meant so was she, and if that wasn’t true, well, I didn’t know what I’d do.

I got a D in that class. I blame it on
1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10
We had to know that ways to know thirty physics equations and I’ve always hated math. But I’ve always dreamed of meeting the man on the moon, that face among the clouds that shown its light into my room.

1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10 had me believing in nothing other than entropy but the photography of astronomy introduced me to the total vastness and the pristinely preserved history of the formation of our universe that is our moon, nameless in its splendor, silent in its poetry.

People often talk about looking up a the night sky with wonder; they talk about how the stars should be things we wish on but little do they know that we are the product of their explosions. When we look up at the night sky, we are looking at all that has made us, all that has died, for us.

People take large leaps of faith in this world- they trust the word of those they’ve never met, they believe in the things their parents said, they trust the internet and Wikipedia and of course, religious doctrine, most without question and yet, it is in the sky, the star, in astronomy, that the answers we seek can actually be found.

‘Cause see, in the long run 1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10 doesn’t mean a god-damn thing and neither does the gold because we are made of star stuff.

Star stuff.

Well I used to believe in soul mates, I thought had all the answers, thought I knew all I had to. Turns out I didn’t know a god-damn thing ‘till she left me, ‘till she gone and said goodbye, ‘cause when that happened 1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10 exploded like a star in the sky, all that bad expanded into some spectacular view because baby, with you, my pores learn what it means to sweat in moments when you tease me to my knees, make my body tremble with the kind of want that makes my bones shake like bear branches in January. My spine is made of a shoelace, I am tangled for you, untie my mind, my mind which is evaporated by the thought of your touch. you change my form from ice to budding flower, I am beauty growing out of the cement of our past as it fertilizes our future.

I am hydrogen exploding a first generation star that births a universe and creates a sun out of love.

Star stuff

Because of you, I believe that a soul mate is just someone made up of the same star stuff- a part of you matches up completely with a part of me, we share the experience of explosion, we were a part of the same flame, the same ash, the same orbiting debris that collected and formed and evolved over time. Look at us now.

I once wrote that love is a supernova, a moment with two people meet at the universe is no longer the same because another is born in that very place, baby, this is beyond Redshift, this is the splitting of reality, of all that’s known and thought to be true and it’s all because of you. Kiss me as if you speak the tongue of the sun, explain it in terms of love, always pull me back to you, teach me that inches, miles, light yeas and space no longer matter because distance doesn’t exist. You may not always be within my reach but the things you say touch me every day. I still feel you move in the middle of the night even though I’m far away.

Now, I may not know what I trust in god and what I trust in destiny but I do trust in the universe, eloquent in its violence, slow in its creation of perfection. I used to believe in entropy, used to believe in 1, 3, 4, 8, 4, 10. The key phrase there is used to because now, now I believe in star mates, now I just believe in you.


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