gravity is not a virtue

this poem was sparked in my head after reading a poem by my friend Alex (Physics student and fellow science-junky) and discussing the nature of friction and the concept of growing nearer to someone. i was visiting stockton (the black hole overgrown i call home) and was confronted with many disturbing facts about myself and the city i grew up in. it is a breeding ground for disruption, really. anyway, i digress -- this is what i ended up with after lots of hours spent rehashing my conversation with Alex:

not even with

   chimes against my back

 could i make the creaks sound

pleasant or at all well-mannered

even with shoes

  twelve steps is too many

and against my cheek

   my hand is never enough-

thought it spells out

    what i need it to

   the fingers bend by their own rules

(knowing my head is trying to control them)

they mill about my possessions

  making sure what's mine is theirs

    (shakily holding on to everything)

watching my mouth 

    in the mirror

[ i know 

     i said, "love"

  and i meant it

              every time]        [ every time ]

i draw inspiration 

   on my face and on napkins

and it always looks like a backward sky

my visual sense 

   makes poor change 

for paper left blank

the integral bends

   make shapes into words

that read like an unsteady escalator-

the same two directions

   in the middle of

         no one

  to write poems about

the ever-thickening roads

 that feed off our body heat and

      conversational breath-

it's an incomplete

 attraction i have to

 smiling cell phones:

always flashing date and time

   as if to reassure me i'm still running late

like 

 an alarm in my blood-

    

coloring my wrists and 

  keeping time on names

i can barely remember but

  have to remind myself to forget

like comments kept in

 while thoughts slip passed

the guard i hold in the palm that

     covers my mouth

-i've obligations to announce-

there are negotiations

   pronounced by visceral 

responses we aren't aware we're giving

      and

by our own volition

 we believe otherwise

(when we should know better

  than to fuck with the forces of nature)

like our sense of touch

  which a friend pointed out

is a result of electrons pushing 

     away from one another--

"people think 

    they're getting closer," 

              he said

and

  almost everything

         about it

    made us laugh

*thanks to Alex A., the Stupid-Ass Genius