Triangular ears, cone shaped nose,
trapezoid body, coil of a tail.
The abacus of your black beady eyes
speaks of arithmetic, calculations.
What algebraic mind sends you barking
down the hall seeking out equations?
Licking your paws in algorithms
you breathe in cycles of in and out,
plus one and minus one --
napping in the zero of your bed.
You sweet, small mathematical creature,
I love you to infinity.
Mary found a dinosaur egg
in her closet
The stork was the latest victim
Of rye bread and corned beef we speak
dancing in the everglades
A pale moon worshiped the morning sky
Trauma aboard the toy boat in the bathtub
incestuous conversation in the lobby
Golden pianos warm up the soup
Flying ninjas escalate the fight over
landfill’s gold reserves
Barf is, too, a clinical term
Jasmine Crockett, not Davy
Larry Bird, not Admiral
Eisenhower, Stevenson and Kennedy
Three Flyways
Computers yield to the abacus
tummy ache, all better
Suburban lawnmowers on the prowl, daddy
Gently thumbing the abacus of my memories
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
The muse has no fingers
Possesses no internal abacus
Cannot fathom fractious patterns
…take one word from line A
And two from line B
Skip line C
Use it as line D
Drop C into C
With six you get Egg Roll
blinkered by formal training
counting bright abacus beads of syllables
mindful not to step on cracks—
rhythm is everything
the audience c h e e r s !!!
the runner-up jeers—
maybe next time the nexus of …
the bows and brasses displayed
along with my bruises
an abacus of pearls
c.a.s.t
on
w a t e r
that drowns out the h-o-o-f-b-e-a-t-s of
a P O U N D I N G heart
a trace of desire
slated at the font
of knowledge
concurrent with my past
laurels
I bow to your discerning palate—
you clap for
REPETITION
repetition
r e p e t i t i o n
but I do not rest
unlike Keats
my NAME
is not
writ in
w a t e r …
In vast realm between both false realities
efforts of a strained bowel movement collapse
like the arithmetic dreams of abacus beads.
Arthritic persistence contemplates procrastination
while stillborn attempts at cleverness
seem to flicker as defibrillator paddles exchange electrons.
You can’t revive what wasn’t alive.
Abacus
My abacus frame will only hold
tiny monk heads on her
metal rods.
What is the age
of reality itself
Older than
a metaphor
Unreferenced
on a shelf
What is the distance
unmeasured from within
Spoken of
but never seen
A poets
dying whim
What is time uncounted
as numbers lose their clout
The hourglass
returned to sand
An abacus
in doubt
What is love ungifted
but feelings’ last excuse
To roam unlinked
between the chains
And blame it
—on the Muse
(Dreamsleep: December, 2023)
Words are emotion's instrument,
language elementals playing verse's lament, consciousness', lined segment.
Like a Toon, in idea delineation,
incharacterizing, crystalizes stylizes component, tending intent.
O Vehicle pigment of perception, perceiving decorate of mind's apartment.
Compartmentalized strings transported by familiar,
wings,
mind,
rune,
symbol,
telepathy of cheats,
divining what is already there,
dining on empathy.
MirrorWandPictureEntity, transposing matters,
in the art rendering of eye to eye in order to see,
A T communication advent matrix grid
abacus-ad -cabaret, place-holder of epiphany holding film of the camera times phi eating pi of voltaicity.
A connection pathed from a yearning of the soul in creative spark.
In search of combinations and angles of understanding's precision and decision of part,
in the fonts of construction leading to the charter of baptism keys to understanding
the leading to the heart.
Lion
Not only king of jungle
But lone like a back bencher
Must find subsitence
Or die like a crow
Lone in wild abacus
Must not show his sorrows
Or other animals will call him weak
Lion
Not only king of jungle
But lone like a back bencher
Must find subsitence
Or die like a crow
Lone in wild abacus
Must not show his sorrows
Or other animals will call him weak
He had a sneaky tongue,
it bent around his molars
like a serpentine noodle.
His Adams apple
was an ever-shifting abacus
that calculated words
as if they were untethered beads.
Mathematics were his
clinical persuasion,
a laudable science
he hammered
into a sterile
impregnable language
for bespectacled cyborgs,
for he (the Bradly),
daily taught snotty tykes
who ponged of sticky,
childish proclivities.
Some teach, some
kill the ozone of eager minds.
We kids and Mr. Bradly
were never meant
for each other,
but he did instruct us
in the oily arts of
disinterest,
indifference,
and inattention.
It seemed to me, at the outset, an abacus,
Of nursery kids; and, lo, looked less glamorous;
It had scales fixed on a piano skeleton,
While an abacus shone like beads in gelatin...!
It has an Asian origin, someone told me,
(Does it mean continent chauvinism sets me free?)
I listened to it once, as a snake its charmer,
After all, can any music be a harmer...?
Rough, razor-sharp, clattering, bubbling, and doubling,
Shrill, hollow, ticking, transparent, and less troubling;
Odd rough ringing, clanging, and gonging pulled my soul,
I felt, in xylophonic tune, I had a role...!
Harmony, as that of the other rhythmic tools,
In xylophone too, like deep freshwater lakes, pools;
Tunes and tones, like echoes from mountains and hills filled,
My heart, with its melodic mood, got wildly thrilled...!!!
28 April 2023
Rhymes Checked At: Rhyme Zone
Syllables Checked At: How Many Syllables
Abacus yacht boats pleasy
Banana boats are queazy
Catamaran boats squeezy
Dinghy boats all out easy
Eagle Craft boats too cheesy
Fishing boats yet so breezy
Game boats crazy uneasy
Houseboats creepy sneezy
Inflatable boats fizzy
Jet boats so smokeeasy
Kayak boats much so creasy
Lifeboats namely are busy
Motor boats mainly teasy
Narrowboats are but woozy
Origami boats leasy
Pontoon boats namely weasy
Q-Ship boats likewise greasy
Rider boats rather wheezy
Sedan bridge boats are flimsy
Trawler boats just as queasy
U-boats notably dizzy
Vessel boats sure are squeasy
Wakeboard boats easy-peasy
Xebec boats rather frenzy
Yacht boats are indeed sleazy
Zille fish boats funny fuzzy
There are five
perhaps six, maybe more?
There's always the invisible
when observing deer.
A speckled group
braids a tangled grove.
Stippled light shapes -
not their appearance
but their disappearance.
Deeper into the trees
there are mottles and flecks,
a sun-streaked shimmering.
Deer thread leaf and bough
floating over
pools of light and shade.
Shapes move in and out
of a mirage
painted to baffle.
I watch
tallying their invisible sum
on a green abacus.
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