greenemmaphant-blog

[greenemmaphant-blog]

Myocardium

sometimes i feel like my heart will race out of my chest 

my heart is independent of my body

i can hear it 

pulsing

just above my right ear

so i wait for it to return

[greenemmaphant-blog]

Adios al amor pasado

farewell i say 

and goodbye yet bye is not good

scars

scathing

burns 

festid

sores

i look back to tears and breakdowns

and checking oil by the side of the road

as we watched a parade of ants 

carrying food that weighed five times their own bodies

and i called it a miracle of nature

and you squashed them

and you laughed

and you took my nature

and called me evil

because you were so inclined

to look in a mirror

when you looked at me

you grasped at me

your vices holding fast

and i couldnt eat

but watch the center of my world

waste away and die

while i was a thousand miles away

but my heart tachycardiac

as it turned to the embrace of sin

and bit for the first time 

into human flesh

and you ripped a piece of flesh 

from me

as i was kicking and screaming 

to break free

and as my blood pooled 

on the bathroom tile

i saw a glint in

that crooked smile

it wasnt mine

it was yours

it was yours

i was yours

i escaped that day

to a pedestal

where i wasnt prey

to the demons 

and the black decay

to flay the gray mass

and the devils touch

for He has touched you

no lo es amor

lo que tu sientes

se ama una obsesion

[greenemmaphant-blog]

the argument

can i weigh your words against my own. when all i know and all i see is all i want to know and see. and frown. frown onto that unhappy fate that lures you in. it is not my fate that you frown upon. but then again i guess it is. i lost someone a while ago. and with bated breath i wait to lose once more. i wait but i do not want it. i do not want it. can i see. can i trust my childs eyes to someone elses breath. someone elses breath that i can see for reasons so unknown to me. i want to scream the world to sleep. before you start to count black sheep. i cannot weigh your words against my own because they sing two different songs. but the songs sound parallel and harmonize. a merger forms. you gasp in a reluctant sigh. and all is lost to fiery night. heads alight with pulsing blood. and needles turn to flowers. needles turn to flowers.

[greenemmaphant-blog]

A love poem from one recluse to another

I've seen you gasp

in bloody tears from within

cracked walls.

is it wrong that I smashed that fortress in,

with point force on a nail?

And turning, you face me

from where you were cornered,

shining from the top of your hair,

and you bent down and glared

that flashlight on my face

so fast that I blinked.

Then you were gone, yet the

perpetual ghost-image

of your beautiful smile was burned

behind my eyelids, and

it squiggles back and forth every

now and again.

But where you are, millions of footsteps

away from my own beating blood-pump,

have you gathered the cement and caulk 

and repaired that pile of rubble

that I blasted from your grasp?

I miss you too.

[greenemmaphant-blog]

The Burqa

the burqa walks five foot ten

and the burqa talks six and seven emerging from white halls to wooden floors to polarized shades converging the gaze

of dilated eyes and nested hands

the burqa sees again, but still led by the elbow by a frazzle-haired set of eyes and ears and nose

perched atop dark skin shielding cotton briefs

the burqa lives and probably fills shrouded lungs with air and probably walks in shoes and probably shields cotton briefs as well but let it be known that the burqa is recognized and not annoyed

[greenemmaphant-blog]

a woolen cord

my life has lost its center

its circled around twice

and lost among the spinning wheel

ten pieces more ill never see

that twirled into net

those circles lost entwined

with the focus

i never face

[greenemmaphant-blog]

The Ballad of the Reed and the Stone

I came across a fallow reed

Whose thistles had all gone to seed

And on the side I noticed there

A porous rock so thin from wear

Its caverns were but mossy halls

Inside rough, crusty, crumbling walls.

The rapids had tossed it aside

As they made way for fish to glide

Into those trepidacious reeds

That knotted up like prayer beads.

No fish would peck the hollow rock;

It was the fetid reed they sought

To catch themselves in, beached and raped,

Until no single one escaped.

All this allowed to fertilize

Those spiny thorns, for more to rise.

The tangled reed just made a mess;

the rock would die in loneliness.

[greenemmaphant-blog]

These are my earrings

[greenemmaphant-blog]

I measure time

I measure time

by how long my

fingernails are

unfortunately,

my left hand grows

faster than my right

[greenemmaphant-blog]

A Note on Energy

     I suppose studying for the MCAT has had me thinking about the nature of Energy itself lately. Most questions of cause and effect, in physics, in chemistry, in biology, in people, can simply be described in terms of transference of energy, from one that is more willing to give to one that is more willing to receive. It is an interesting notion, especially considering that, on the surface, everything seems to want to become more structured, more ordered, and that in order to do this, and to become more efficient and closer to perfection, each object containing an intrinsic desire to order itself, must give up much, if not all, of its energy. In this sense, what in this universe would wish to be the recipient of this energy? Sure, things may take a bit of the energy and use it to reorganize themselves a bit more before they give it up again, but the energy has to land somewhere. This chain or cycle of energy transfer has to end somewhere, right?

     Well, rather than continue where this is going and digressing into a depressing train of thoughts leading to the end of the world, I would like to mark this question as irrelevant. We know where the energy ultimately goes, that the universe just takes it back up and gets a buzz off of it before dispersing the energy throughout itself with a contented hum. If the energy of something goes down, the energy it looses goes to something in the "everything else" around it, and the number one rule of this energy transfer is it has to be given in a more disorganized form than it was originally. Thermo 101. Kinda like you transferring money from one account to another in a really bad bank and every time you transfer, they throw some of that money out onto the streets, for someone else to grab or for it to go swirling away in the wind. 

    When I was first learning about enthalpy and entropy and all that as a kid, I suppose I always saw the spontaneously entropic "loss" of energy as a strange vibration that is sent out through the nothingness of space and that every time any sort of energy was transferred on earth, this vibration would persist indefinitely until it got diluted out by the sheer magnitude of the cold blackness out there. But this was only until I learned exactly what e=mc^2 meant or a bit about quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. Nothingness can't vibrate, but luckily, as far as we know, there is no "nothingness" surrounding us within at least 14 billion light years. Everything out there remotely close to us contains at least a little mass or a little energy, which, as we know, are two sides of the same coin. In fact, the entire universe that we know is just a massive disturbance of itself. Even time is a gross disturbance that's leaking out of every pore of space. It's like God sneezed out in 11 dimensions, and the snot formed somewhat orderly globules that go flying in every direction, but the fact still is that we're flying.

     I guess what made me think of all of this was when I started thinking about amplification pathways. For instance, consider you are in a tunnel that's pitch dark and all of a sudden your photoreceptors pick up 5 photons from one direction. These photoreceptors send this signal on to cells that integrate the signal. Then these cells send the signal back to your brain, which apprehends where the signal is coming from. You start to think about this signal, and different parts of your brain interpret its relevance. You make a decision based on this signal and activate more cells in your brain to goad your muscles into movement. Before you know it, you are running full-speed toward the source of the signal, your body metabolizing much more energy than the signal originally provided. Or consider a person who is so deathly allergic to peanuts that even exposure to a tiny bit of protein in the nut could kill her. Or perhaps consider a married couple that is in love, but they start fighting over a single credit card bill, which eventually ends in a divorce and a lawsuit. Or maybe think of a more extreme example where a collection of atoms start a detonating chain reaction that obliterates an entire city. Contrary to what Newton said, reactions may not always seem equal and opposite. But perhaps they are.

     What was common in all of those examples? Well, it's important to note that in each of those cases, all of the energy was already in the respondent, prior to its subtle activation. Your body already has all the energy it needs to respond to a desirable stimulus such as a light, or an undesirable one, such as a protein in nuts that you are allergic to. If an argument over one single bill caused the couple to end the marriage fairly explosively, there must have already been much underlying tension in their relationship that kept the momentum going. And the explosion of an atomic bomb relies on the fact that you can convert a tiny amount of mass into an enormous amount of energy almost instantaneously. 

     All that it takes for a small prod like that to morph into something explosive is a direction for all of that energy. Yes, perhaps ordered energy will spontaneously release itself, such as the release heat from your body or occasional radioactive decay. But for something big to happen, the actual process of releasing that energy must be directed, ordered, and shuttled toward an outcome. 

     What I'm ultimately trying to say is that, yes, maybe the chain of energy transfer must end at some point, but until that time, the passage of all of our energy must be directed so as to accomplish as much as we can in the least amount of time. (and that's the formula for increased power, isn't it?) Our bodies already do this for us, fairly nicely. But how can we do this for ourselves? Are we truly directing ourselves where we want to be? 

And no matter how much directed energy it takes to push us toward where we desire to be, always remember that we have all of that energy and more within us, at the ready.

[greenemmaphant-blog]

If no news is good news

and there's no news like good news

then is good news no news?

[greenemmaphant-blog]

Afternoon Sun, Leafy, filtered, Frozen felt, Knife through pages, Ransom scape, Evening Sun

[greenemmaphant-blog]

sex toys and turbulence

crevaces

cold, creaking

cinder walls,

surpass crystal ceiling

supple marsh

welting, stashed

by fishnet mesh;

tuning hollows

thrash about

these alpha feet;

broken toes and

tinder meet

enter time:

taste this feast

for freedom come

from gnashing beast

this is not

tender meat

bones are bread

but not souls

[greenemmaphant-blog]

a note on changing leaves

agape with wind

as it rushes in

and stirs my memory

to cold-ing company

and what i lost last;

so long it has past

i cant speak for fear

that the wind might tear

unsaid words from my mouth

so i shiver in silence

[greenemmaphant-blog]

this one is for you

there are things that i need to say to you

but you know how i am

there was once this boy with piercing green eyes

and tall brown hair with a sharp chin

and a thin smile and he played guitar

and harmonica and sang riffs

that rolled off his tongue because he wanted

to build up a christian album that consecrated his ideas

and he made me laugh because I thought

that he was insane but he fell for my sister

and i frowned because i had already taken

what was hers so i planted that thing

by the food courts at the mall and he saw it

and his eyes danced at the adultery in my poise

but then i tossed him aside as i tossed my head

and his songs turned from praise to regret

because i could not hear them

but i could just see that regret

and that thing that i took 

the thing that was my sisters

i used it as a hammer to smash my own knuckles

because i knew that i deserved it

for my body my poise and this made me slouch

but it kept me thin

and i stepped on that thing

and when i tredded on it i got slime on my shoes

so maybe i slipped and fell 

and it was hard to get up

until my bloody knuckles knitted back together

so that i could clench my fist

and toss that thing out the window

seven stories down into a dumpster

but i missed so the shards

shattered scattered on asphalt

to break someone elses bare feet

[greenemmaphant-blog]

"The original sin was supposed to have been committed by Adam. Who as we now know never existed. So we now have the preposterous idea that Jesus was sacrificed, the scapegoat was sacrificed, for the sins of a nonexistent forebearer."

--Richard Dawkins

[greenemmaphant-blog]

How the silence can still your tongue

I can remember the last words

I spoke to you, because

they rang out concise 

and clear

and strong;

they were tied to my thoughts,

and I've never uttered a sentence before

or since

that I actually meant more.

I can't remember the last words

you spoke to me because

they were cloudy,

with a haze

that I'm sure veiled your eyes,

and I felt that the murkiness

was obscuring something 

awful,

torturous

that belied your renegade mouth.

And I wanted to put my words

into your mouth, because

I'd known your conviction before.

before the haze took you, 

but instead, you said

something about not knowing,

and I should have said that I knew,

I should have screamed it at you

and pulled you from the haze,

but then I would have lied,

and you always hated lying.

So I repeated my truth,

clawing for some hold on you,

but I felt you slipping deeper

into the murkiness,

and I couldn't grab you,

because I was afraid of those depths.

And I still whisper those words

into the night,

when I know the air is stirred by 

no one else's breath but my own,

but I'm afraid that

the haze is so thick

and the darkness so cold,

it freezes i love you

to the bridge of my nose.