ENTROPY

I saw you at the library.
You said you’d gone to mars on a ‘commercial spaceship’
or something.

I removed three honey sticks from my pocket and offered you one.
You shook your hands in an ambiguous signal.

I mumbled something and ate the honey sticks while I walked you to your room
and you talked about Mars and space and stars and black holes and the accelerating universe.

I noticed your hair was still black—
not red or brown or purple—
and felt a little surprised.

I AM HOLDING SOMETHING SMALL AND BEAUTIFUL

Last year I watched an MSNBC interview with a biology professor from UC Berkeley.
The professor repeated, “Waking up and feeling like shit is an element of the human condition,” while nodding his head.
Two hours ago, while making oatmeal, I remembered dreaming I bought a puffy jacket from Target.

contemporary hostage crisis

yesterday a man locked himself in the cleaning supplies room
while trying to understand relativity
if you could look into the moon from a smaller distance it would be a mirror
made of rocks and stories from childhood
last week the news said the big dipper trapped a commercial airplane
and is holding the passengers hostages in exchange for graphs of time
a thirty-second segment about cereal recalls followed