Approximation Poems | Examples

who remembers trees

when air was free from fares
    guiltless
    tankless
    unassailable

cliches of rustling leaves
enchanted forests
infanticidal practices like nestling newborns atop boughs
cordate declarations etched beneath oak bark and canary sashes 
as dead as concrete blocks

and the nearest approximation is a toy broccoli flower

wire wools welded for steel topiaries 
laud the arboreal knights
growing figments stalking the future 
with whom was shared breath and hearth
in Slab City

      

                    two plus two is five 
                that would be inaccurate 
                      however precise 
             he loves me he loves me not
            goddammit ~ he hits the spot 


By
David Kavanagh

Have you ever pretended a guy was interesting?
Have you slow danced and let him sniff you up close?
I gives you somewhere to go, if you decide to.

Or given a little kiss—nothing slutty in that.
You know, a 'person' isn’t a good kisser - it takes two.
I’m not talking about me, of course.

There’s a two-way interrogation going on
complete with our own internal narratives
—we reenact it’s rituals in the strangest places

like quiet libraries or the lerch and spin of a dance club
we process by analogy and approximation and it works
until it doesn’t, like cold water poured into a glass.

Then we settle back into the dull rhythms of study
I’m not talking about me, of course.
.
.
Songs for this:
Loveland by The Blenders
Human Nature by Mitchell Brunings

I heard all the anecdotes on antidotes
but I wanted my therapy done chemically
so much that, in an approximation of intoxication 
my judgments blurred uncertainties with a whispered ‘allegedly’

spectacular vernacular, jailed - minus crime or credibility
capital cliches of an amateur poet, inevitably
a teenagers growing phases annotated in the vaguest of chosen but stolen phrases
regurgitated words and statements

the morbidity of authenticity that is lexicon-artistry


http://samnicholasharrison.tumblr.com/

I’ve ever minded to live or to die,
Always striving life and eluding death;
There’s no end to live or be dead.

All it takes there’s to celebrate,
But my life is not a celebration;
There must be wastrel for a celebrity.

I note a void of failure and success,
Yet have failed attempting to succeed;
For in failure lies the aura of success.

I vie life with poverty and riches;
Whereof is contentment, be poor or rich?
But the depth of heart than be poor or rich.

I ‘void sadness and sought to be happy,
And sadly tire of the bid to live happily;
How sad is the path of happiness.

I ponder ‘times being baddy and goody
Struggling ‘tween badness and goodness;
But there must be bad for triumph of good 

All my life I wait on seasons and times,
Plan and live as warrant the seasons and time;
As though there’s an end to seasons or time.

(fragment)

English version by Liviu Martinescu

50.
oddly the leaves seem to count us
in their fall
houses shaped as a shrill sound
nobody lives in nobody
often the poor hear the nought in objects
blind people's hands do not signify
in litheness of pure
bars stroking one word
that thought-lives us
imitating the wistfulness of
unborn gods
we sink too soon
in the sleep-iron landscape
our fingers deafened
by the cranial blade of computers
surrounded by liquid helium solitude
and pounded heart
in the vacuum mouth of objects
we can only be saved by the word
the word that grinds its own shape
with the intensity of a star
breathing its own catastrophe
the word through which the violet
ribs of children can be seen
sequential workers
their complexion as dark as statistics
the gauze bandages of goods
hiding rotting canals
we live in approximation
our eyes shredded
by speed
nonplussed we fail no notice
that our dogs return from hunting
bearing sumerian tablets on their collars
who are you coming out of the net of time
to touch our civilization
with a myrtle sprig
ay sleep hauls cities
on paltry claws
their music a breeze from the future
yet cybernetic bells snow down
on blue deafness

You're lives are an illusion,
You must decide what is real to you,
Love is rare,
Some say love is as effervescent as steam,
Others its eternal,
For me tobacco and art are real.
A painting is an approximation of the dream/reality you are in.
I will carry on painting until I am fooled enough by illusions to die,
Maybe not ever.

there was nothing tangible
not now not ever
reality dwells beyond the stars

perception is a myth
the suffering are simply mistaken
only their thoughts hurt them

true love is a shared experience
as it always was and always will be
but not through a computer screen

this is only my best approximation
a poet struggles to find the words
the feeling is beyond description

words are symbols of symbols
twice removed from reality
we live beyond the stars

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