Best Remainders Poems
Remains of stars adorn the sky
with nebulae aglow on high
in stunning patterns that romance
the wondering stargazer’s glance
or simply senses mystify.
While stellar orbs are born and die,
do heavens strum a lullaby
as all around the cosmos dance
remains of stars?
Might there be heard celestial sigh
when Man seems deaf to wisdom’s cry
and Mother Nature looks askance?
Will humans waken from their trance?
For in our earthly beings lie
remains of stars.
~ Harley White
* * * * * * * * *
“We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.”
~ Carl Sagan, Cosmos
The poem is a rondeau ~ a short poem of fixed form, consisting of 13 lines (plus the phrase twice) on two rhymes and having the opening words or phrase used in two places as an unrhymed refrain.
A planetary nebula is an expanding cloud of gas ejected from a star that is nearing the end of its life. The nebula glows because of ultraviolet radiation from the hot remnant star at its center. In only a few thousand years the nebula will dissipate into space. The central star will then gradually cool down, eventually becoming a white dwarf, the final stage of evolution for nearly all stars.
The Bloody Brexit
It should have been so simple
There was a referendum
People voted leave
And Britain should have withdrawn
In an orderly fashion; but no.
The remainders wouldn’t here
Of it and the spectacle become undignified.
One would think the UK didn’t exist
Before the EU it did.
Boris Johnson is an opportunist he is
Not remotely interested either way
He wants power
And the American why of health service
The leavers should not entertain him
But continue their fight to let Britain
Go its own way.
TO BE BROKEN IS TO BE HONEST
Voice: Space Cadet (Wesley C)
The sand is a warm window;
from the sill,
I watch skiffs in the distance sail away from me.
Sea opens to self-sought solitude.
That one day, distant lands became familiar playground
for children of men, cruelly joined in time and place,
by dice thrown into air, dimpled cubes with my name
and theirs.
I hear those children laugh in their sunny day, ice cream innocence.
Their language a sound from once familiar foreign land.
I stand in pain, refuse the hand that asks
to help
And wonder:
if to be a child
is to be honest,
am I blind
to their askance stares? With each step will I
leave behind their glares?
As I lift my head from my feet, with eyes toward the sea, my scars
are only reflections of the footprints they perceive to be as me:
Lines in the flesh-colored sand,
wilted under uneven sea edges, remainders of the battle of separation.
Craters, crimson petals blemished in the glass sun.
A lonely pursuit.
A sand rose's stigmata on my chest.
Silence polished on my window reflection.
Yet I gleam, my back to a windowless beach:
With each day's dusk,
we all fracture,
light decays
myriad aspects
etched experiences
To be broken
is to be honest
After the sunrise
(At first the morning was clear)
The clouds drifted in
The last lilacs on the fence
Drop their petals to the ground
The signal changes;
Litter dances down the street
With a passing truck
Fanning herself as she walks
Between stores and restaurants
The orange tree blossoms;
Where there was an orange orchard
Now, rows of houses
Though they have lowered the price
There still aren't any takers
At the used bookstore
Stacks and stacks of remainders
Overlooked, unread
He downloads crucial data
For his graduate thesis
As the full moon shines
Gliding past the left shoulder,
Past the window frame
To her surprise she liked him
And hopes to see him again
Above bare branches
The third storey apartment
Glows with warmth and light
The sound of many voices
Sharing stories, sharing songs
In the garbage lilies may bloom
Yet in its odor will always loom
Faint traces of its abused past
Wounds may fade but traces last
Had heaven pity on this fool
And struck her down dead where she lay
That she did not see another day
Mourned in loss and wasted away
If I tore out these eyes of mine
And blinded to the sight divine
That caught my eyes, I will not sin
By yearning love not mine to keep
When I first tasted love’s venom
How enflamed passions burnt anew
Love pulsed through my soul, a fiery hue
Yet overcomes now solemn Fate,
I am innocent no more.
I will ne’er be what I was before
I depart now, wretched heart
From the remainders of my waste
In hopes that in my death regain
What love I sought and sought in vain
Your lady fair sure owns your heart
Yet your remorse mine for evermore
In the shadows I will meet thee
In your darkest hours to greet thee
Midst deadly silence, fancies free me
Whisper, but my name, you’ll see me…
Form:
It was my plan to set aside this past week
to prepare for the Quantitative Graduate Record Exam.
A week ago this seemed like a big number
for ample review,
time set aside from more typical U.S. autumn events,
like electing a white male economic supremacist for President,
after having taken a 12 year break
from all those irrational remainders.
I have always thought math should be revolutionary,
climatic,
resonantly resolving like rainbow harmonies of scale,
profoundly correlational with geometric truths
as algebraic beauty,
and I suppose it may be all those good things
yet this week math feels suspiciously snarky and sinister,
replete with far more ways to go wrong
than right.
So today I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t bother
with these mysterious Quantities of testing.
Although I did well forty years ago
and didn’t know any more or less
about mathematical machinations then
than now.
Or so I thought
until I actually opened up the GRE review section.
When did math become so monochromatically dull,
devoid of plot
and anything resembling metaphysical charisma?
Soon I found the verbal questions
much more edifying.
Well, OK, not really that,
but more entertaining than watching formulas dry
and principles march in relentless mind-numbing LeftBrain dominant lock-step.
It took years of ecotherapy to overcome
white male LeftBrain dominance
and now, so late in life,
discovering I don’t even miss it
any more or less than zero-sum WinLose economics.
But, I think I will visit the Quantitative section
day after tomorrow
Say goodbye to old friends
I’ve never had occasion to use
or abuse
due to relentless negative correlational neglect.
It might be fun
to see if I guess as well as I used to
when I was still young enough
to believe metric right or wrong could possibly matter.
Now I know it’s just not true
except for statistical analysis,
which is at least as much about
the politics of subjective Electoral College economics,
as objective rules of fair and accurately cooperative procedures,
verified as reified by all.
The NY EBS
There is talk of war.
There is rumor and propaganda.
There is concern and worry.
No one wants to die.
No one wants to die,
for no reason at all.
Where is the positive
in that death,
the "heroic" story... ?
There is none, and will never
be any, except the misery, and pain
without gain for any man, or woman... alive.
Commercials on the air,
New York despair,
put your head down, to the ground...
as you hear the pound, pound, pound!
While you are there...
pray for one another,
and before your last breath include
peace among and for ALL!
Duck and cover in the 50s
seems like child's play now.
All the players are all grown up.
They have become big fish too,
in their small freshwater ponds
scattered around the world.
Size matters because a splash felt there,
will be felt here, before the end of days.
No one will escape.
There are no survivors,
only the remainders,
on their knees before God.
Asking not for mercy,
as they know it is far beyond that point,
racking up the number they killed.
Asking instead for grace, in desperation,
before the nations fall to the dogs.
Mathematics used to be called Arithmetic.
I was the last one to know they had renamed it.
I was in sixth grade, and furious when I discovered no one had told me.
Addition. Okay. No problem.
Subtraction. A bit trickier, more of a stretch, but doable.
Multiplication. For some reason, I adored it!
And word problems. Oh ,yes, more please! Loved them.
Division. Not so excited; they took too long and remainders seemed dumb.
Pre-algebra. X plus three equals 5. Okay, that one’s easy but then you
add all those parenthesis and more and more letters, and it gets crazy.
Geometry was a foreign language I simply did not want to ever see again.
I did not understand any of it, and would like to never speak of it again.
Statistics. I had to pass it to graduate with my degree. Just choke me now.
And choke me hard enough that I do not have to do it tomorrow.
I knew I would never use it, and guess what? I never have.
Sometimes Left equals Right,
like day equivocates night,
wondrously but rarely,
awesomely, because almost never,
like a fully mysterious solar eclipse,
revolutionary, because not slow-grown evolutionary,
the Earth says Hello!
Personally and politically,
romantically and academically,
lovingly and yet wisely prudent,
economically with ecological empowering light.
But, usually
historically
multiculturally
polypathically
ecotherapeutically
Business as Cooperatively
not capitalistically uberYanged,
more like a healthy ecoforest Usual
and not so much an evangelical colony
of nationalistic supremacy
shouting No! God Owns You!
You owe our WesternWhite God allegiance
as we have made God in our most patriotic patriarchal
LeftBrain punishing nationalistic voice
for retributive cultural RightWing vengeance!
Marginal remainders refine LeftBrain analysis
to hear echoes of Not Yet,
perhaps not even in this enraptured egocentric lifetime
Too BusinessAsUsual seldom
we also hear RightBrain passion
belonging songs of ecotherapeutic outside voices
speaking sacred whispers, chirps, scolds, surf, winds
of all past and future
Advents
Predicting and threatening 2020
revolutionary Yes! Here is Now
Space is TimeSquared consciousness
Yang is Yin 4D temporal flow
PolyNomial is PolyPhonic language
seasonal rhythmused experience
EcoResilient politics of YesPower
is also EgoResonant Theology
of +1 = (-,-)0 PolyPathic BiCameral Revolutions
for Yes! = NotNot Yet
unto healthy perpetuity...
Some good morning StarShines,
this GreenBlue Earth echoes
and cheers
ultra non-violent Hello!
Climaxing 2020 healthy wealth time
with organically enlightening
romantic bodies
of patriarchal historical evolutions
within music matriarchal revolving revolutions.
A book out from the library
Occasionally holds
A paper with a message
Or a list within its folds.
The borrower who left it
May have used it as a mark,
Reminding her whence in the tale
She needs to disembark.
I’m used to such remainders
But today I was surprised
To take note of someone’s writing
In a place that mystified.
On the last page of my writing book
(Which I am now approaching)
There’s an inked-in cell phone number
On my private space encroaching.
Above it are some letters
But they do not spell a name.
Did someone write this in the store
From which this journal came?
Of course, I never noticed it;
The book appeared brand-new
And really, what’s the difference?
There is nothing I can do.
I had the thought, though, what if I
Picked up the phone to dial
That number waiting there? I won’t,
But oh, that makes me smile!
As the brain plays,
The pieces graze,
Forming a phase,
To conform words,
Magnificient to small,
Minimized or caplocked tall,
Knowledge will fall,
Into place when wanted,
For the chemicals rise,
Inside the body flies,
Meaningful ties,
Bringing up a life.
How conveniently set,
Boy or girl it's met,
Until the Outside threat,
Reaches the end.
Stepping back; crew,
Seeing the child blue,
The next step to do,
Is the seeing of the funeral day.
Family arrives,
Husbands and wives,
Remembering the drives,
Of the little ones remainders.
Little movements were heard,
Eyes became blurred,
Sayings were slurred,
Opening up a new vision.
Knowing what was,
A weighted cause,
The heart beats pause,
Needing his laugh one more time.
What a beautiful smile,
A respectful style,
Wishing him to stay awhile,
But the time has already passed.
Inhaling then Exhaling air,
Sending up a prayer,
Not meaning to stare,
At the family in need.
Present beats what's passed,
Leaving memories to last,
With costs vast,
But not wanting to move forward.
A little boys cry,
Says his last goodbye,
Leaving the room dry,
As they take him away.
Hold on; it's only right,
He's the young sisters knight,
Holding onto any freight,
She may withold in the future.
Push to the next,
Beat the wish of the wrecks,
To recieve the respects,
From those who care-let them in and hold them dear.
All but faded,are
sensibilities remainders
uncommon to the commonwealth
as the richness of feeling become numbing
In all it's glory,whether
past or present
our soul continues forward in the future
as ourself eventually, to catch and keep up
Navigating the burning coals
our predestined fate
laid down is the souls trail,we follow
cool underfoot,mindful of it's guidance
Our journey,is not of this world
our destination,ordained
from a much higher source
as our awakened souls suffer....
Remnants of Winters tendrils
reside upon the bare basalt cliffs.
Cornrows of ice cascade
washed by relentless rain.
Down pours the mana
of Spring, the Bride,
berating the laggard Winter;
expunging the beauty of ice.
The sunless muted morn aids
Winters grip on its crowning glory;
braiding wayward wisps of white
into crevasses.
The last, lingering, lustful
remainders of Winter.
The day before Spring begins.
belonging to one of many a School of Thought
one merely seconds the notion...
Notion...notioN...
NotioN -- echoes from a chasm
of mirrors which neither casts
an accurate image or sounds
quite the same.
if deemed a Perfect Soul --
by the imperfect souls --
one could create a new
School of Thought among the Remainders
and become another grain of sand
along the shore of the ocean of Communication
and Understanding which crests and flutters
with a god bitten amplitude.
(to appease the Machiavellian and atheist
with the idea of "god" before "bitten amplitude,"
one substitutes the notion with "limit" or "limitlessness.")
it goes on in a cycle to say
that communication
can either choose words for meaning
something -- limit --
or choose silence for meaning
everything -- limitlessness.
this the Epigone decides
where to lie among or over contradictions.
We are to attached
Our lives have
many forms.
These are our remainders.
To give our stuff up
it seems to be
to much.
Emotional and
Physical.
Our scars
We hang on until tomorrow.
Memories from yesterday's.
Our things we collect
are are treasures.
And I ask
Can what we hold
in our hands be
the same.
As in our hearts
for people we no
longer see.
Do you follow me?
It just a thing
like a piece of paper
Or clothes?
Who knows
We are to attached
that a fact.
That why we move
on to a smaller space.
It help clean out.
Even though we think
what a waste.
To leave behind.
But it happens to
all of us in good time.