Things That Remind me of Newton's Universal Law of Gravity

[dukealien]

Things That Remind Me of Newton's Universal Law of Gravity

1. Flight-times to Thailand
   
2. and bombshells
   
3.    [both kinds.]
   
   
   
4. Inside jokes
   
5. which are derivatives
   
6. of other inside jokes
   
7. which are derivatives.
   
   
8. How a bench can be
   
9. just a bench,
   
10. or it can be an altar,
    
11. or it can be a bar,
    
12. or it can be the saddest place.
    
13.    [A week of rain
    
14.    and whiskey
    
15.    and soggy cigarettes
    
16.    is not a valid prescription
    
17.    for anything.]
    
    
18. How the mud washes
    
19. from my fingertips
    
20. and makes a river delta
    
21. of my sink
    
22. before I eat.
    
    
23. Pink flesh in general.
    
24. Prison cells in general.
    
    
25.    [It was touch-and-go for awhile,
    
26.    but at 30 I can comfortably say
    
27.    I am not an albatross.]
    
    
28. Trying to forget.
    
29. Trying to remember.
    
30. Trying in general.
    
    
31. All the little things I want
    
32. but never buy.
    

Very refreshing, general to particular and partway back again.  Good to see macro/Newtonion physics in metaphor, speaking to the mysteries of attraction.

The asides in square brackets do an interesting job; I found the L27 albatross sufficiently mysterioius to look up alternatives to the Coleridge and natural (spends whole life on the wing) definitions.  The "urban" definition - well, that's a little corner of my mind no bleach will restore.

Technique:  Most lines sentences start with an accented syllable, which seems to be prevalent in modern free verse.  But subsequent lines generally don't; it feels a bit more like prose than poetry.  Short sentences counteract this, in part.

Repetition:  Used very well in L28-30, with a nice twist from L29 to L30.  Not sure it works quite as well, repeating the whole first part of the phrase in L10-12.  Perhaps L10 and 11 could be shortened ("or an altar/or a bar") with L12 as is.  But monsoon monotony may have been the intent here.

There are a lot of references to attraction and capture (especially L23-24 and the last five lines), playing well from the gravity metaphor.  The sink, too (with coriolis swirl not mentioned?  That's some heavy mud, or a very flat-bottomed sink.)

I hear, in L31-32, not capture but the limited freedom possible in a gravitational system:  orbit, the primary (object of desire) not actually struck (bought) through the magic of (angular) momentum.

Idiosyncratic stumble:  the river delta in the sink has its "river" to the drain, its "ocean" where the mud drips off your fingers.  The picture is there, but the flow is the wrong direction for a river delta.

Overall comments:  Flows, a bit languidly, which fits the theme.  Can't help but wonder if L4-7 are necessary:  the verse is clever and has meaning, but doesn't seem to move the story onward where it is.  Could it be attached to the drain of the sink instead?

Hope there's at least one valuable observation or suggestion above.  There's a lot in this poem to like.