I am not a drop tower thrill ride

That you relish for a few seconds, having waited in line –

Brimming with excitement,

Quivering with anticipation of the adrenaline

About to course your veins.

With ice cream dripping down your wrists

And cotton candy sticking to the sweaty crevices

Around the syrupy, toxic smile that perennially adorns

Your superficially pretty face –

For a short two minutes that

With the help of

Your disproportionate self-centeredness

You effortlessly label "an eternity".

 

 

I shall not forget, I will not forgive.

This is not a joke, I am not that thrill ride.

 

June 10, 2026 

 

End of the experiment

It was to be expected, wasn't it?
Isn't this how all experiments end?
At least the controlled ones,
The scientific ones,
The "proper" ones;
Where the experimenter has prepared
The specimens with care,
Divided them neatly into two groups —
Control group and experimental group —
And carefully tested for one variable?

All such experiments end one way,
Regardless of what happens
To the hypothesis:
Disproven or not yet disproven.
(As scientists incessantly remind us:
Good hypotheses are falsifiable,
And hence can never truly be proven.
Their best hope
Is constant fortification
By surviving several experiments.)

The way all experiments end
Is at the laboratory sink.
Where flask, pipette and petri dish
Are cleansed of the last vestige
Of all specimens —
Control or experimental.

The experimenter, being well-pleased
With data so meticulously gathered,
Is expected to have scant respect
For his now-used, now-worthless specimens.
It's not a moral question for him,
It's simply following protocol.
For this is how experiments must end:
"Please wash all equipment when you're done."

A Curve Closed

Her short cropped hair admitting few curves
Like her equations, a trove of frugal beauty.
Of surfaces, toruses, and closed curves--
Real things in an imagined topology.

A geodesic is the shortest curve
Amongst all like it:
The laconic prefect of an unruly class
That stands and speaks for them all.
What it lacks in length,
It makes up for in weight --
Though not in the literal sense;
Euclid won't allow it!
But it carries the weight
Of other wanton, wasteful curves.
It speaks for all, despite being the shortest.

Thus it was with the curve of her life
Brief though it was --
How illogically, unfairly, painfully short!
It carried the weight
Of not just her ambitions
Across continents, cultures, classrooms, conferences;
But also those of more meandering life-curves.
That accomplished not so much,
Longer and loopier though they were.

And though I can't speak for her,
Ungifted, untutored, unprepared and unskilled as I am,
She speaks for me
Through her scintillating work.
The geodesic of her life,
Though it closed too soon,
Is yet the weightiest one of all.

For Maryam Mirzakhani

August 2017

Electromagnetism

The crackle of static
Excited electrons
Jumping out of their assigned orbits
Arcing through the air
The photons they emit
Glance off the brown iris
Of your eyes
A micro instant before
The electrons contact my skin
A full instant before your fingers
Touch mine;
Triggering dormant nerve cells into action:
Racing impulses to a brain
Where eager synapses trigger thoughts
That stoke the imagination for a while,
Yet never incite the tongue to speak,
Nor the limbs to act.

The twinkle in your eyes,
The jolt of static,
The touch of your fingertips
(A digital connection of the physical kind),
And the thoughts they inspire --
A four-beat symphony of attraction,
Of electricity and magnetism
That lives in the fecund imagination
Of a mind
Trapped in a timorous body --
Too timid to act.

March 2017

Measure of Man

Is man measured by his worst deeds?
By his lowest ebbs, his nethermost?
Is that his worth, the totality of him?
Is that the sum and sigma of his being?

Is he no better than the reckoning
Of his errors faults, frailties,
Flaws, venal and cardinal sins,
Mistakes of commission and omission?

If that's the true measure of man,
His essence, his core, his soul.
Let no man's death be ever mourned.
Let no man try as hard as he can.

Saints are sinners who keep trying.
Sinners are saints once forgiven.
Measure not man by his lowest ebbs
Let his soul to its fullest flow.

Feb 2014

INFP

Not for me the rough, roughed up, roughened ways of brawn.
Not for me the slick, smarmy, syrupy forms of glib.
Not for me the undue, unsolicited, unctuous style of deceit.
These modes are not for me.

I'd rather be quiet on the sidelines, observing.
I'd rather be unseen and unnoticed, noticing.
I'd rather be humble and circumspect, absorbing.
This style suits me.

Strut, swagger, smear, obliteration.
Self-loathing in defeat, triumphalism in victory.
A knee-jerk zero-summing of everything to competition.
Is not how I see and effect things.
                                         
Hunger, thirst, ache, unrequitedness.
Petals torn off tulips in their bloom.
Leave for me the shards of delicate things.
The unswept confetti of your victory parade.

Prepositions

I was under your spell once --
My salad days, when I was green and fresh --
I hung on every word of yours,
Especially those last few you wrote.

You sent me those words from afar,
Agitated electrons carrying your shocking missive.
Negatively charged minuscule particles --
An apter metaphor I cannot imagine!

I don't live there any more,
Where your hurtful words hit me hard.
I don't live @ that address,
I have found better digs, nearer people.

After walking for several miles through St. Louis

The river was first, I'm sure
Meandering through the plain.
Later, I surmise -- what history I know --
The cowpaths now paved into relative permanence.
A crooked bridge: angular, not curved.
As if eager to span the river below;
The shortest path may not be a straight line
When you're bisecting a fractal curve.
Then the shiny monument:
The upturned necklace hung over the city-gate.
Like a welcoming garland to travelers westbound.
But like an inverted horseshoe,
Imbued with ill-luck
For unsuspecting premonitionists.

And lately, my instep arch,
That not only keeps the ache
(Like the bard of Boston said),
But also leaves a curved footprint;
Another ephemeral contribution
To the arch-city's history.

Rivulet

Once in an unexpected way
A struggling thought did stray,
Leaving the appointed bounds
It hearkened to sweeter sounds.

A heady yet heedless brook,
Charting a way no one mistook
To be a plausible course
It burbled - spared no remorse.

Weak though it was, it was hard to dam
'Twas not the current, but the sham,
Mocking, random way it swayed;
That stopped its run from being stayed.

It was as if the rivulet
Knew what fate it would have met
And with an unseen force
Made its way from its source.

Downstream and upstream!
The thought was itself a dream
Unrestrained by physical law,
It charted a course no one saw.

But dreams have their own laws
As fragile as a dam of straws.
They can not sustain the gales
That pushing reality entails.

The brook seeped in the land --
It could not meet its own demand.
The blazing light of reality
Robbed it of all it could be.

But in the dry sandbed of time
You may yet spot its prime.
The thought is long bygone,
Its dry course still holds strong.

Memories

Furrows of my mind,
Lying straight as strings,
In which I sow keenly
Memories of you with me.
Bygone and happy things.

I nurture them with love;
Salt-water do they drink.
I keep them from the frost,
For they must not be lost --
They are my only links.

The seasons, they pass by
Each with its own trail
Of happiness and woe;
But my memories do not grow.
They only grow frail.

Lord, when shall I reap
Fruits of years long past?
Shall I even live to see
Just one grow into a tree --
How long will it all last?

Later, I realized;
Much late, too late, indeed;
Memories ought not to be sowed.
From them, nothing is owed,
For the tree lies all in the seed!