may 1 2013 how am i supposed to describe the odd pressure that rises in my ribcage as i unconsciously absorb the same

infrasound frequencies as alexander the great and jesus of nazareth and tesla and my parents before my birth? i am standing on a hill repeatedly listening to a 100-second recording of the sound the big bang made transposed up to the 26th power the white noise of the universe is this softly repeated in the background of everything i am constantly feeling the beauty of it in the intercostal spaces of my chest and the curve of my spine molded to millions of invisibly vibrating late-received text messages may 2 2013 why are there so few poems about arm wrestling? the universal experience of indescribable self-esteem achieved after winning this game of strength is the only vehicle through which i can relate to the jabronis at the gym listening to surf rock and sharing pure physicality feels like the purest corporeal embodiment of poetry's forceful evocation of emotional ambiguity after i read this poem over the gym loudspeaker i will doubtlessly receive a standing ovation from the bodybuilders of america may 3 2013 i am a fourth grader sweating over song of solomon in secret you are the back of a closet in the abandoned house that was my best friend's backyard together we form some sort of symbiosis: a degenerate version of the mystic connection between midi-chlorians and jedi i will forever reference stars wars re: our relationship so its about time you get used to it may 4 2013 my lip swells in the middle of class and i excuse myself its size seems to match my level of excitement about the grass growing on my windowsill like a forest of microbes, dead lymph cells, and/or ancient redwood trees i am microscopically involved in the production of atoms and sequoioidaea the ecosystem in my immune system is a national park that deforestation will never inherit

may 5 2013 a baby bird died today and i am replaying its collision with my window the crows outside are beginning to attack passersby to keep their nests on the roof safe when the bird fell three stories the person on the sidewalk below thought it was a crow with dignity i close my curtains and choose to think about the birds that sang outside my window in seventh grade when i nished my rst terrible love song and how not even they could make it sound good may 6 2013 the speed and ease with which personal experience and subjectivity can be invalidated is astounding let me use social/political theory to explain how your life is unimportant the joys of deconstructionism are implicit in the rhetoric of the perpetually ignorant the arguments presented by your pillowcase in the middle of the night are more persuasive than the speeches of trained c-span professionals may 7 2013 there is a curious tone to your voice as it is broadcasted across state lines i think silently about how many people might be listening and wondering the same things how is it that you have come to sound like a stationary fan on a late-july night? the silent spots in your speech where punctuation sleeps are more pronounced what must our silent listeners think of us? what must they justify our vernacular silence with? like a breaker box in an inherited house answers are difcult to comprehend may 8 2013 it is the future and i am recently in love with the wispy hairs on the back of your neck when we have sex i wonder if we could braid our pubic hair together and live life as siamese twins joined at this place only we truly know

may 9 2013 at 2am i feel like christopher columbus in 1496 forcibly strapped to the deck of the pinta speaking to angels in the syphilitic uorescence of half burnt christmas lights may 10 2013 my face is lined with zigzags from a sooty burnt wine cork i feel strangely wistful as kirstie details nights as a girl in her grandma's diseased apple orchard the cider they would make was/is sour and opaque the ashen designs everyone's older brother learned from his summer at the indian reservation spell out the only sort of truth my skin has ever known may 11 2013 i begin to feel a strong sense of disconnect about everything related to 'the universe' at around midnight every night today i found out that ve or six of my friends have on completely independent occasions bought the exact same shirt from the exact same small clothing vendor on the internet we all experience the same reality and we all experience it relatively the exact same way we are only conscious of the bits that involve ourselves and that is the fundamental jealousy that is the human experience if you give me a moment of a your time i guarantee it may be a waste may 12 2013 in the two minutes it takes to sprint to luke's car i get soaked by rain from above and day-old stale beer puddles from below i cannot stress to you enough my insecurities about my tness level regarding anything besides my stamina for long-distance phone calls

may 13 2013 how to stick 'n' poke tattoo: 1. nd a needle. preferably the one that was both used by your mother to stitch your baby blanket and by you to sew a ask-sized hidden pocket on the inside of your denim jacket 2. get ink on the needle. soak the sharp metal tip in the ink with the same relative simplicity as the rst time you "had sex" but really were only a naked human being with another naked human being in the same unkempt bed 3. poke holes ~1-2mm deep in the skin to make the design. please be patient and deliberate; like raising children and beginner drug use, if you make a mistake it will be visibly apparent to the proper authorities/deities you ascribe(d) to 4. wipe, clean, and moisturize the tattoo. this is important to avoid infection/future chest pain, ensuring that the cold indifference of people you will love for a year and a half does not leave its own terrible on the inner skin of your bloody lower lip may 14 2013 two hours ago i was naked in a eld during the year's rst thunderstorm the long grass of your backyard collects our bodies like our hair collects the slight charge of static electricity when was the last time you blinked in perfect sync with booming thunderclaps? when is the next time you will leave your pretty existence, even if just for the timeless instant of a lightning ash? i am collecting electric water in the hairs and valleys of my body even as your skin gains enough magnetism to draw me into a punctuated elliptical orbit may 15 2013 standard response to the interview question "do you have any questions for us?": if deductive reasoning cannot show us any truths regarding matters of fact what process of the human mind do we use to join cause and effect? may 16 2013 i have discovered the true teleological purpose of my life: to form a pixies cover band my old best friend once had a congenial conversation with frank black over myspace message two years later our band sold ve cds and then broke up on the real i have 300 copies left in a mcsweeney's box that is shaped like a sweating man's head if this isn't representative of the distinctiveness of 19 year-old confusion than nothing is

may 17 2013 i can t everything i own in a medium sized bedroom and everything i know with certainty in a single human synapse i prefer to leave lit candles in open drafty windowsills because their thin dying smoke is the closest to god/understanding i will ever get may 18 2013 the slowly crystalizing parts of your half-asleep murmurs that are swimming in my bloodstream give off a calm vibe like cannon beach at midnight when i think of your impossibly short ngernails let me try to relay to you the gravity of sleeping on the shores of the pacic ocean: when the waves recede far beyond the halo of our driftwood campre we are quickly engulfed in a tsunami as our sleeping bags nally discover how to zip themselves together with zero human interference may 19 2013 this is the body where i met you this is the patch of mud and grass that has been hiding my phone for the past 14 hours this is the basement that housed the 300 people who recontoured a hill while running from cops this is a kitchen i have never kissed anyone inside, and at this rate probably never will this is the driveway where i helped taylor smash a chair (i have known him since birth and he tells me jakob tonight i am feeling alive with you and i cannot think of a better compliment than this) this is the patio where chelsea shouted at me for being mean to her, for being a condescending asshole to sam, for always being dismissive of the horoscopes she has never yet told me this is the couch where i stared at a rainbow for 3 hours this is the body where i met you may 20 2013 there is something about late nights that reminds me of domesticity of shared 40s and stolen whipped cream and the held back tears of new friends luke punches a window and the glass in my mouth is a signal, sharp and bright like a lighthouse on the pacic ocean i am tall, i am yellow, i am unused this feeling of being past my due date exists only on the coast

may 21 2013 a quick example of the vagrancy of the human condition: the party across the street has been broken up by police three times today since 9am one drunk human male knocks over a recycling bin; the sound of breaking glass is alarming, beautiful this brings the cops back to the scene but the other drunk human males discount any and all criticism through the repetition of one singular unifying phrase "baseball" may 22 2013 i cannot control my speed when i listen to two steps, twice my excitement at the squalid intellectualism of the people i nd myself surrounded with is matched only by the strangeness of these last 2 days in the house that i know better than i know any person living or dead may 23 2013 the overow of the gutter outside my third oor window looks and sounds like my home state's largest day trip tourist attraction i am trying to convince myself that i live in the cave behind multnomah falls in my dreams i wake up at the bottom of the 620 foot fall but i only feel at home halfway down may 24 2013 i am the new owner of my father's old patchless denim jacket and i nd myself memorizing home videos of my young childhood self i can recite to you every recorded word of a boy who will later wear his father's clothes and the wool hat the father wore in high school when a car accident split his face in half

may 24 2013 let me remind you of the ominous cracks apparent in graduation ceremonies my graduation speaker, a convicted felon, spoke of lights and forgiveness the student speakers in every school in america (8th, 12th, undergrad) swear their bonds of friendship are "forever and unbreakable" i do not need to explain the humor apparent in the absurdity presented in this poem please be conscious that i do not want to be responsible for the future of the nation if you need me i will be asleep on a roof in western god damn washington may 25 2013 the windows at my sister's house are stained with rings of soap water bubbles like the japanese stained glass i broke at 14 years old they now exist only in trashcans and ghost data directories in back memory logs of soon-to-be trashed free cell phones may 26 2013 i do not believe in america existing as an ethereal idea but i do believe in minnesota rain and late-received text messages from ska band drummers the at elds in the evening blur the edges of the mississippi river until it dissolves into what i presume is your bloodstream although it could just be soaking the hem of the velvet dress you are wearing back home and my overromantisization of travel just stems from a need to be separated to be in love like this may 27 2013 the urge to cover myself in lyrics from semi-depressive songs is almost unbearable i read about an art project attempting to print out the internet while i understand the environmental criticism of this idea who can deny the occasional need to remind the body of the lyrics to emo songs that spent as much time on a myspace playlist as they did silently in the throat of your teenage self?

may 28 2013 for two weeks at the beginning of the summer my best friend and i live in an abandoned college dorm we are alone here and the absence of noise is refreshing/oppressive there is no wi in the wilderness and i am forced to count the times i sigh in hour-long showers may 29 2013 i wish i could sleep in the cold waters of the clackamas river i want to pull myself hand over hand up the rapids and search for the cool corners of river rocks and slowly-eroded beer cans in the current i will kiss you with hypothermia lips and repeat the story of how i almost died on a lake in new zealand may 30 2013 i often nd myself wondering about the painting i almost bought from the homeless man in front of the dick's on capitol hill an impressionist rendering of a slowly melting face medium: charcoal on wood would it be anti-humanist to relate this experience to death of the author? i do not nd myself thinking about the artist with his woodpile of $50 paintings directed towards guilty street philanthropists but instead about how my favorite art is time-based, sloppy, human, surreal and the worlds best art museum is underneath your nearest downtown bridge may 31 2013 after i walk the entire 17 mile length of the large hadron collider i will get a tattoo of the milky way on my chest it will be red-and-blue 3d just under my collar line to represent the redshift (big freeze) of everything i know and the blueshift (big crunch) of every story you have ever told that i have forgotten

thank you so much for reading.

may, 2013 is a collection of poems i wrote every day in the month of may. the poems were inspired by snapshots of images or memories i had on each of those days; i wrote them to help me remember what i might otherwise forget. may, 2013 is the fth release in a longer project, in which i am releasing similar collections of poetry at the end of every month in 2013. the reasons are twofold: to keep a strong, specic motivation for poetry writing and to provide a space to improve the quality of my writing outside the traditional academic workshop setting. so please, feel free to critique, comment, suggest, attack, admire, or anything else which i should consider for future works.

also in 2013:
january, 2013 february, 2013 march, 2013 april, 2013

also by jakob maier:

beautiful mean things may

contact me:
facebook.com/iammaier iammaier.tumblr.com iamjakobmaier@gmail.com @iammaier