Happy New Year

Standing on the edge of this year's swan song,
I marveled at a spectrum of dark cores and bright shores.
Three hundred and sixty five long.
(Happy new year)

I struggled within and pursued happiness.
Friendship subsided my ire; so did toil.
Three hundred and sixty five relentless.
(Happy new year)

I loved beyond (my sweetheart) and kissed contemplation.
'Freed-will' subsided my demons; so did accidental romances.
Three hundred and sixty five elation.
(Happy new year)

I rebelled silently and let loose imagination.
Hope subsided self-doubts; so did courage.
Three hundred and sixty five brave passion.
Happy new year.

Dawn of A Winter Sky

Boundless crystals on a winter dawn.
Nature's tears and her silent yawn.
Muddy clouds in the midnight sun.

Faraway, faraway, flurry of lights run.
When the lazy luster caresses loud,
a vagabond bird glitters almost sound.

Nomadic wings of the bleeding sky.

Hark, hark! flapping sound nigh.

One of Those Days

 By Edward Hyde  

This short story won second place in the "short story contest" by Sponge, Fall, 2013 in the University of Utah. (http://thesponge.eng.utah.edu/issues)  


It was a gloomy October day in Salt Lake City and Vy reached her lab early morning at 8.

  "Hi", she greeted Spencer, who sat next to her desk at one corner of the lab. That corner was relatively darker than other parts of the lab.
  "Good morning Vy. Dr. Jekyll was looking for you half an hour ago", Spencer told her while watching Ultimate Frisbee game on YouTube.
  "Ah! He talked with me for two hours last night. What does he want now? I just want to get out of this lab; tomorrow if possible." She sounded frustrated and nervous at the same time. Her PhD committee was going to meet at 2 PM that day to decide on her defense date. In last few weeks, she experienced bipolar mood swings ranging from the despair of failure to the hope of future happiness.
  "Hang in there, Vy. You will be fine. You've worked hard for the last 6 years; now it's only a matter of a few months!", he tried to calm her down.

  While writing her thesis, she'd appeared for interviews in chemical industries. Two weeks ago, a company in San Diego offered her a job. This bought her three months' time to defend her thesis and join the company. This would not make Dr. Jekyll happy as he wanted her to take a post doctoral position instead of an industrial job. She lost whatever interest she used to have in academics during sixth year of PhD.

  Professor Jekyll's bacteriology lab was placed at one end of the new Skaggs Pharmacy Building. He chose that spot carefully in order to stop the smell of stinky bacteria from spreading.

  "Vy, did you culture bacteria last night?" Marie Antoinette, a post doctoral researcher rushed from the Biochemistry side of the lab and asked urgently.
  "Yes, I did. Why?" Vy replied.
  "It got spilled from the incubator and now, the whole place stinks like skunk. Dr. Jekyll was mad at this." Vy ran to the culture room without saying a word and started to clean the mess immediately. It took her almost two hours to clean up the yellow colored spill. Once done with cleaning, she started to work on the power-point slides of her presentation.

  Suddenly, Dr. Jekyll opened the lab door at the far end and shouted, "Vy, are you in yet?" She sprang from her chair and hurried to her working place. He found her at the edge of the work desk where she started to label random vials with a black sharpie.
  "When are you going to show me your power-points? I came this morning looking for you, but, you were not here." Before she could reply, he started again, "And the bacteria spill is not acceptable to me. This is not professional." Her face became pale and a few sweat drops gathered on forehead. Then, a cruel silence followed.
  Spencer walked gingerly towards them and interjected, "Vy, you have a phone call." She was relieved at Spencer's intervention though angry with Marie Antoinette, who had probably reported her crime to Dr. Jekyll.

  The phone call was a hoax. This was a common practice in the lab to save a student from the firing line of Dr. Jekyll. "Aha, okay.......okay. Sounds good.......Amm, okay," Vy responded to the dead phone call. Having realized that Dr. Jekyll was not around, she stopped talking to the phone and went back to her desk to give the final touch to her presentation.

  At noon, Dr. Jekyll walked in and demanded that Vy show him the slides. "It is almost four weeks since we submitted the paper. I hope it will be accepted. Once you submit your third paper, you should be able to graduate," Dr. Jekyll spoke as she was changing the slides for him. She frowned and released a deep sigh.
  "I am running the last experiment and will be done writing the paper in December. I would like to defend before Christmas", she started with some temper but ended with almost pleading. Deaf to her voice, he asked her to make a few changes and wished her luck.

  The meeting was started at 2 PM. Her eyes were bright but uncertain. Five committee members were seated at a rectangular table. Dr. Jekyll started the proceedings by introducing her to the other committee members. Halfway through her presentation, one of the members stopped her to ask the mechanism of bacterial infection. Then, a deluge of questions followed and the committee suggested more experiments. It was one of those days when her answers were all over the place. After much deliberation, they decided that she would graduate sometime in the Spring semester. She walked slowly to the lab and sat down with her face on her hands.

  "Oh, no! The reviewers have rejected my paper", Vy spoke softly while still reading on her computer screen.
  "I am sorry. You are a fighter and you will fight back hard," Spencer made an effort to keep her spirits up. The lab door at the other end opened fast and Dr. Jekyll walked straight to her desk, probably to give her lectures.  

  Vy tried her best to hold back tears. Outside the lab, it started to pour heavily from the gloomy heaven.

Oh! Nadezhda

Infatuation

A robust voice on a gloomy October evening announced
your passion for freedom and humanity.
A rush of rhetoric swept away the university premises.
My dispassionate numbers drooled over your firebrand.
1% : 22%, 0.1% : 11% are men : wealth in America,
a curse of 21st century inequality.
The promise of America is between the sky and deep sea.

Love

I saw the dawn of proletariat; good morning my Nadezhda!
Let us wake up now as opportunity knocks at the gates.
Let us incite against $7.25 wage when billions are in profit.
Add your acerbity to the fuel that just ignited a fire.
Our voice got sharper at the altar of Government propaganda.
there, we burnt the brightest.
Your flame kept me warm all night long, thank you!

War

On second day of occupation, the cold wave of penury hit us.
At the street corner, we met with Jesus Christ, exhausted.
His crucified bloody body rebelled, still being kicked by greed.
He offered love to starving kids of main street.
And, I struggled against a few strong Men but could not save my love.
O Nadezhda, is this the end of us?
War is still on all the streets; how much love left in you, Jesus?

Death

The funeral is the end of your one life cycle but not your humanity.
Red and white flowers on your grave are our shared memories.
A bunch of tired but unyielding wills,
low sound of your flapping wings.
A march of our infatuation, love and war and your grande finale.
Goodbye my Nadezhda.

E= hv= mc2

You are blue and young, only a few light years away.
I wait for eternal darkness to arrive every evening,
for you to bright up a halo with a burst of energy.
Your constant smile in Hubble's universe and
your dancing photons are equations of my future.
If you see my mother, tell her to slow down.
If you see my dad, tell him to take good rest;
he is running all his life in four dimensions.

You are young and brilliant blue of midnight horizon.
My feet on an arrow of time start to break the blindness
and follow your light amid cacophony of wide open field.
When I get tired, I renew myself by the shower of your duality,
eh! dazzling wave-particle on the tangent of summer curvature.
I am closer to your blue frequency now more than ever.
Let us dance together at a rhythm of our resonance.
We are a star of infinite darkness, my matter-morphosis!
..................................................................
The equations of motion in Newtonian mechanics were replaced by similar equations between matrices; it was a strange experience to find that many of the old results of Newtonian mechanics, like conservation of energy etc., could be derived also in the new scheme. Later the investigations of Born, Jordan and Dirac showed that the matrices representing position and momentum of the electron do not commute. This later fact demonstrated clearly the essential difference between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics.

Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy
(Chapter II. The History of Quantum Theory)
..................................................................
The difference between Newtonian mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity is this: In classical theory we assume that future and past are separated by an infinitely short time interval which we may call the present moment. In the theory of relativity we have learned that the situation is different: future and past are separated by a finite time interval the length of which depends on the distance from the observer. Any action can only be propagated by a velocity smaller than or equal to the velocity of light. Therefore, an observer can at a given instant neither know of nor influence any event at a distant point which takes place between two characteristic times. The one time is the instant at which a light signal has to be given from the point of the event in order to reach the observer at the instant of observation. The other time is the instant at which a light signal, given by the observer at the instant of observation, reaches the point of the event. The whole finite time interval between these two instants may be said to belong to the "present time" for the observer at the instant of observation. Any event taking place between the two characteristic times may be called "simultaneous" with the act of observation.

Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy
(Chapter VII. The Theory of Relativity)

2010

Saturday, September 4^th

And there you are, at last!

Sitting on a low wood by the edge of a narrow lane,

your wait celebrates every moment dashing to 6 PM.

Under slanting Sun and your bright eyes,
beats of an unknown joy evolve in my heart.

A spring of your straight smile flows instantly;

possibly, still vivid on the western crimson riot!

Our nonsense talks about cop chasing car,

Anderson Hall through almost bleeding Fall,

and your love for Oreo brownie ice-cream,

as if everything is a fast infatuation!

As evening fervor blossoms the brightest,

innocence glimmers amongst glitter of our eyes, just!

Friday, September 10^th

Radina’s Coffee, 3 PM

Early romance getting fervent,

we sit by the window glass facing the same narrow lane.

I am afraid today if this is a dream,

moving rapidly through multitude snapshots.

Happiness on your smile abundant, you rejoice,

and I wonder if it’s just the random weekend vibe!

East Stadium, 11:30 PM

Night falls and green turf becomes brazen by September dew.

Train of impulses takes us over now,

soft words culminate into touches restrained,

I see sensation on your dove like neck.

Under a million glittering darkness,

we look far above in the ever unfolding mystery.

Tenderness moistens aloud on our trembling lips.

Monday, September 13^th, evening

With our every passing zeal in the thunder evening,

chains of inhibitions are liberated one by one.

Now, you unleash yourself as passion arrives.

The gate of ecstasy opens up in a rage.

Fast murmur of our breath follows veiled aroma lissome,

I see goose bumps from your neck to your bosom,

Some lines between us melt into glory,

with every paint on your lips and fingers sublime.

Whisper by whisper, bite by bite,

bursting thrill colors a hickey on my neck.

Wednesday, September 22^nd, Konza Prairie

Wonder of fading rays on the cloud of heaven

leaves a trail through just showered prairie.

Blinded by cold sun, we kiss, see time fly!

As stars get brighter and moon burns full,

we start towards cacophony of wild.

Adrenaline takes over curvy roads little known.

We believe, you pray and we believe again.

Warmth by warmth, I sense you the most today.

Walk by walk, I live an age in this moment halfway!

Stefan, I and A Few Others

I dedicate this work to my PhD adviser, Prof. Stefan H. Bossmann.

Under the lull of a purple town,

a brilliance touched by eccentricity

incites motivation, weaved in freedom of thought.

A glorious rainbow rises in the dark rooms of sweat and sweet.

Every cyanine lights up my mind infinite;

I would hold a candle to those cells on the horizon.

Dreams and dreams, your loudest song alive!

Multitude of parachutes migrate in bright and blue

in the deepest darkness of the ocean bed.

As power of imagination charges,

bio-luminescence makes a leap from the ocean to CB 344.

Step by step, a party of molecules starts in a round bottom flask.

Fire, Fire! set alight those cells;
let them die and us live for a while.

A touch insanity flirting with risk, your grandest show!

.................................................................

Cyanine: A range of dyes that we synthesized in lab in order to image tumor

Parachutes: a metaphor for jelly fish whose luminescence is being used for radiation therapy

those cells: cancer cells

CB344: synthesis lab