Best Differential Poems
I, too, dislike poems.
I’ve tried runes (and rampikes)
but that’s affected
rather than merely effete.
So I call them
figments.
When people query
What do you write?
at a barbecue or birthday party
I say soliloquies,
fractals,
fragments.
Self-similarities,
singularities,
sculptures (scriptures), geometric shapes and series,
three dimensional triangles, spheres
and differential equations,
fractured fairy tales,
Rocky and Bullwinkle,
rectal impactions.
On the other hand,
bits, bots, bytes
remnants, scrap, earth
gobs of phlegm in grains of sand,
shards of glass in a slice of hell,
hunks and clumps, curds and whey, sleet and pain, slap in the face
sub-atomic particles, cell organelles,
chunks of energy, cookie crumbs,
rusty trucks stuck in mud, dustings for ghosts,
just plain dumb luck, rocks, concrete, but not tweets.
She lies, tan gentle lines and curves so sharp
she pairs her heart horizontal to zero
Her body falling from great cusps above
Then deriving great pleasure from the angle
Skirting the limits, fleecing the boundaries
She breaks the surface of space
Then her shell is unfolding, unraveling
Wildly spinning out of control on her axis
The ground giving us no differential treatment
Then her inflections begin to fluctuate
Now she can’t ignore the signs anymore
For a symptom hopes a cure will appear
Strum soft sweet chords on wire lyre strings
A convergence we’ll hold, integrate, we’ll come
Together to throw arc shadows on walls
------------------
Expanded on my older poem "Tan Gentle Lines"
Things bloom more beautiful when breaking down.
The nave now ploughs through foams of flowering trees,
a frozen caravel. Kissed by the breeze,
the river surface suddenly seems to frown
exquisitely. The apse’s jaunty crown
of weeds above one (sightless) eye would please
romantic poets. What was once a friese
lies strewn about, a shaley shanty-town.
We love whatever withers, atrophies.
To see a calked construction founder, drown
beneath its own detritus, by degrees
slough off its shape and, sinking to its knees,
expire, is satisfying. Velvet gown?
We’d much prefer to see a soiled chemise.
A lake? A cloud? A mountain? Megan Fox?
If we acknowledge Beauty in these things,
what are we saying? As when Smokey sings,
or girls emerge in slinky summer frocks,
something’s taking place outside the box
of regularity, and sprouting wings.
How might we classify these happenings?
A rupture in the norm? The whole Baroque’s
built on this very point. If Beauty rocks,
what is the special quality it brings,
and why is it so pleasing? Beauty flings
a spanner in the works of Orthodox,
and laughs at Workaday. It mocks
our essence, lurks in quirks, and smirks at clocks.
“The Wordsworth ouevre is cretinous. Discuss.”
The Long, Laborious Quest, The Sparrow’s Nest,
The Noble Oak of Guernica, Addressed –
We can’t escape the feeling he’s a wuss.
His subjects are unconscionable, plus
the rhymes he uses are a facilefest.
If only he were even half in jest!
His humour’s unintentional, and thus
more entertaining than he could have guessed.
Yet something in his scribblings seems to wrest
significance from dross, analogous
to Newton’s differential calculus,
invented by the by, at whim’s behest.
When Wordsworth falls apart, he’s at his best.
Was it from North, clear and cold,
or South, dark and threatening rain,
from East which drives the fishes deep,
or fair West to bring them back again?
From whim of mystic forces
or differential heating giving rise
to local pressure variances
moving air between our skies?
The lightest zephyr may have
brought us together
yet not even a hurricane
can tear us apart.
__________________________________
A tribute to the Anemoi
1/1/2015
untainted yet unfiltered
unrefined and unpolished
retry or repeat
replay and rethink
non-disclosure agreements maintain non-abrasive relations
non-adhesive and non-adjacent
pre-approved with pre-attained knowledge
preceding and preconceived
pre-you and pre-me
post-op after post-apocalypse
post-exposure and post-devaluation
anti-image mingled anti-ego
semi-coherent and semi-caring
over-bearing and under-delivering
sub-human in trans-consciousness
hyper-sensitive before hyper-aggressive
hyper-alert and hyper-aware
out-gunned or out-played
who cares
Why is there this
un-clear re-defining
of a
non-differential pre-ordained
post-humous anti-progressive
semi-important over-emphasized
under-developed sub-genius
trans-race hyper-complex
out-landish ever-changing
Societal "Norm"
Be-you, and let me, be-me.
They are bilingual,
fluent in a paradoxical
intersection of a line and a cloud.
Each language has a distinct cadence,
a unique inflection.
They can jump over the discontinuity,
the differential between
derivative and derivative,
integral and integral.
They put the rhythm in "logarithm"
and could remove the "can't" from "secant"
if words were defined
at the point of intersection.
Philosophers, down the ages,
Have strenuously tried
To figure out language:
Their numerous narratives polarize
Into two Grand narratives, a binary:
Language is referential / differential.
This binary has yielded numerous derivatives.
On the referential side, for instance,
There’s the view that language is an instrument,
As advanced notably by Aristotle, Bhamaha and Dandin.
On the differential side, we have
Saussure’s notion:
Language is a system of differences
(without any positive terms).
Derrida, for his part, widened it:
Language is infinitely differential,
As suggested by his coinage differance,
which implies: language is
slippery, radically unstable,
which, in turn, gave rise to
mind-boggling derivatives
in this postmodern world!
Some of them are: Derrida’s (own) freeplay
of the (autonomous) sign,
Bloom’s (willful) misreading,
And Lyotard’s (incommensurable) language games
(which we all play in this postmodern space willy-nilly)
All these differences have led
Often to acrimonious disputes,
Couched, of late, in a language
that abounds in ambiguity
and neatly underpinned by illogic!
The predicament of these philosophers (old or new) is:
What they and we all observe
is not language-in-itself,
but language as seen by us—
which is similar to what Heisenberg said about nature!
These disputes remind us
of the dispute among the six characters,
in the age-old parable,
which reportedly originated in the Indian Rigveda.
(but now found in several belief systems).
It’s the parable of the six men
(as narrated by John Godfrey Saxe)
Wherein the characters tried
To figure out an elephant,
which, unfortunately, none of them
Had the faculty to see:
So, one called it soft and mushy;
for another it was like a snake;
for the third, it was fan-like,
And so on.
Thus, they “disputed loud and long,
Though each was partly in the right
…and all were [rightly] in the wrong!"
***
"...all that vulgar beauty of iridescence...", "Roosters", by Elizabeth Bishop
"It is used in nature
to recognize organisms
of the same species, choose mates,
confuse and evade predators --
a useful adaptation --
a shimmer of glittering and
changeable colors --
the phenomenon of certain surfaces
that appear to gradually change color
as the angle of view or angle of illumination changes --
(ex: soap bubbles, feathers, butterfly wings,
seashell nacre, as well as certain minerals) --
an inventive optical trick."
Any difference between pearlescent and iridescent?
Pearlescent objects have a luster resembling
that of mother-of-pearl. Iridescent objects
have a lustrous, rainbow-like play of colors
caused by differential refraction of light waves --
as in "the object seems to change color
as you shift your perspective" -- a shimmer
of glittering and changeable colors --
an "inventive optical trick" indeed!
Could there not be some among us, who --
perhaps even if for their own purposes,
are almost -- almost -- almost truly iridescent?
We constantly deal with poetry which puts us in a soporific state,
we sit here apathetic to the cause of studying this beautiful art-
but Poetry’s breath Ad Nauseum about love and laments is bad for a date,
oblivious to the images, while attempting to turn the key we begin to depart.
Yet the door haunts us, novels, plays, yet poetry is the apex,
of this ethereal mystery within the maelstrom that is our mind,
alas this frustration is focused upon the conundrum of poetry being complex,
is it just a condensed novel, this Herculean Task of understanding the undefined.
There are many who deem poetry obsolete but tis rather far from its nadir,
now begins the unequivocally splendid power of the imagination-
hidden by poetry from the vituperative invader,
who’ve made an egregious mistake in deeming poetry a partial differential equation.
Imagination, oh what a beauty long forgotten in the age of reason-
we’ve been given Hobson’s choice, force fed Occam’s razor, given epitome-
yet good ol’ imagination persist like an excretion,
from the eyes of the true daughter of time, Science’s proficiency.
People assume poetry is the modern day Gordian’s Knot-
well- let us assume this is Utopia, were Imagination runs wild-
as she watches her forest, a black cat surreptitiously passes a man in thought,
startled because it is Friday the thirteenth his Triskaidekaphobia- this is all rather mild-
Just the tip of the iceberg was touched upon, just the tip-
Poetry and humanity is an oleaginous affair we mix but do not blend,
Or should we, poems are nothing more than what we put in, as if to dip-
just our toes, before we plunge head first into poems so as to apprehend.
Poetry is the Sun, as you are the flowers shined upon,
given warmth of knowledge and power if you are to just reach.
Not to let Poetry in as if to catch on-
give it back in your own form of speech.
Through your own imagination feed poetry,
It hungers for your reality, though not reality-
procrastinate not- hopefully,
for your conceptions are your sanity.
Or rather is fancy your sanity- decide,
it will affect your observation of poetry forevermore.
It will excite-
whether you believe it to or not- you will love or abhor.
Poetry is not arduous -
just do not assume there is a secret door.
In fact poetry is quite virtuous-
Seek only what you can give poetry, I do implore.
etherial entities, Elsewhere and Elsewhen
less than omnipotent but exceeding their parts
abide in Netherverse, universal children
intertwining potentials conceive child of their arts
a difficult birth through a point of positions
with a breath of inflation our Cosmos survives
face lights up with symmetry breaking transitions
a familiar fine face in the microwave skies
expanding bubble within a where-when ocean
two-way quantum cuddles along the interface
to us, top and bottom, a confusing commotion
to Cosmos, it's all around, warm parents embrace
and Cosmos communicates with siblings and friends
beyond overlapping membranes down massive black holes
at centres of galaxies where light bends and bends
re-meeting and greeting wild oceanic shoals
an ocean of learning, an endless becoming
made in the image of imagined potential
and listen closely, Cosmos is faintly humming
music symphonic with daring differential
keeping a rhythm that fast-forwards down aeons
then surfs the present and through time loops back
fabulous instruments, incredible crayons
sketch the past and future in one amazing track
and our Cosmos is tuned to the beat of life
empathy etched across a holographic mind
sharing grief and joy, the world weary cries of strife
the sheer delight of being, delirious and kind
awareness arises and then consciousness awakes
first galaxy focused on planets around stars
life teems, dreams and dances as intelligences outbreaks
escaping gravity's grip but leaving some scars
for pain and exultation, they fly together
space-timed, time-spaced, while smiling over horizons
Cosmos listens, then learns, needs touch of a feather
to fine tune core settings and cosmic liaisons
the task is great, for the infant bubble may burst
and then duly deflate to a point singular
or forever speed out so flat-lined and cursed
where, when, then... would learning be in story so far?
A boggy wheat? Smell of the feet. And a festival fist of a differential calculus of praenomen poppies. Swaying in a misted setting. One should plant trees in an arc. And Aechyryptipical is very renounced for being a boating lake. Eyes open then eyes shut. Eyes travelling then eyes resting. Training train traverses trailing traffic territoriality so deeply into a glamorous bowl then. Hahahaha weeding a cake. Hahahaha number of concrete consciousness's in a beat. Lalakala and a prick of a beetle nest. Malakanagiri making a curry and a furry coat watches a clock. Cluck cluck cluck. Carnage in a weaponry cross pleases platforms but spits on crocodile crowds. Imperialism *** dot co dot doesn't disentangle disease. Hop hoops hop hop hop and a big snout in a very vertical tree. Xxxx z.
Within my illusion
There is no confusion
A permanently placed delusion
Substituting for my seclusion
Hoping that in conclusion
We avoid diffusion
Within your mentality
There is no finality
Obsession of formality
Dependent on normality
Without a personality
Unable to attain liberality
Within society’s jurisdiction
There is only restriction
Feelings of conviction
Beings filled addiction
Typhlotic to the constriction
Their days only fiction
Within the potential
Become experimental
Make it essential
To be influential
The ending differential
Equates into reverential
This 1966 mustang that i own
It unique and thinks it has it own throne
Oh yes it drives
Thats until the engine dies
Was this car ever fast
To me it seems out classed
Since last year I've worked on this car
Everyone knows i haven't got that far
But i know it has potential
Even thought i just broke it rear end differential
It doesn't roar
And no its not like that greek god thoar
More or less its funny
I should call it a big lovable bunny
on the other-side of a grave wall
there may rightly be a water-vessel
that is chicken-hearted by birth
there may not be around her
a stretching of water-body
do remember
when we all went that day to catch the train
the room of the rail-station was totally vanished
after enquiry it was revealed that
it had gone to observe holidays with its family
in the yolk of the eggs of the snipe
before opening the no-door to take a leap i also knew
that the top-branch of a green and large grasshopper
was mainly made up of white-stones
i did not also have
any mystic words
given by the moon
to recite silently
so without caring for the water
i made a all-complete ocean
with sands and cement
throughout the year
solvency gets down
from the body of the traffic signal
even-then
the monsoon this year
has been under the poverty-line
and the ray of hope is that
it is this circuitous route
leading to the top of the himalaya
that would one day
play the tune of differential calculus
on her guitar
Viewing this vista of extraordinary scene
Scenic she's creative in historic darkened means
Meaningful silhouettes, black squared, dark undulations
Undulated to her visitors, their close clanned relations
Relative they may be, but so different in their norm
Normally they would be, differential in their clans
Clannish their panorama, now dusk before their dawn
Dawn is when there's life, a new day has spawned
Spawning oranges and reds, the dusk now bows to the suns wooing
Wooing this extraordinary scene, now my eyes are viewing
Not for Nette's contest, I just loved the image, and it's theme