Best Tangents Poems
It is the glittery eyes of your
that cause my heart to find nourishment
You do not see my searching eyes
Feels like I'm swimming in an ocean all alone
Is there a formula for happiness - life's fragile tangents
Let the roses live and let the thorns quietly die
You are beautiful like a pearl in the oyster
I was just a friend when you needed a shoulder to cry on
I can read your divine and the powerful face
My great love which was awakened by longing ... is dead
Along with my thoughts I throw red the rose petals on the sea
Is it the past or the future that cause the blood flowing
* ("Some cause happiness wherever they go;. Others, whenever they go"
- Oscar Wilde)
Sponsor: Giorgio V.
Contest Name: Relate your poem to one of these Quotes
Deadline:1/2/2014 12:00:00 AM
03.12.2013
A-L Andresen :)
(1st place in the contest)
So nice talking to people, on same frequency as me
Builds up my confidence, whilst decreasing insanity
Sometimes feel I’m the only one, seeking out truths
Then I meet some kindred spirits, here on the soup
They come from all walks of life, different countries
Northern hemisphere and one below, I’ve yet to see
We hold similar outlooks, based on past difficulties
Seem to understand each other, through our poetry
Sharing dark secrets, releasing pent up adversity
But most of the time, encouraging helpful fantasy
We inspire crazy poems, bouncing off each other
Not copying, creating, following tangents to discover
Are we friends, I guess we are, certainty not enemies
Honestly doesn’t matter, when enjoying good company
Aw he’s filling up, no just finishing yesterday’s dinner
I’m a freethinker, a rogue-poet of sorts, yeah a sinner.
POTW December 2020
By David Kavanagh
Sponsored by: John Hamilton 06/01/2020
life seeks an outcome
with potential to become
many things and none
death itself ~ never quite done
tangents determine the sum
By
David Kavanagh
the power
of a single word
of encouragement
a single moment
that to the core
transforms your life
launching it
in new directions
one surprise after another
life full of such moments
each lifeline looking
much more like a zigzag
than a line
a series of
linked tangents
a sequence of
nothing inconsequential
found in the power
of a single word
Published in my 24-page photo/anthology book ~STAY TRUE~ 2023
AP: Honorable Mention 2020
I'm witnessed
and I feel that I can hope
but I disappear again
into infinite constellations
that don't contain me
to risk just being
an ever reaching hand
in an endless fall
can there be meaning in flux
if time cannot be stopped
and I cannot be stilled
there are all ways and none ~
a cascade of push, pull and feeling
an ache that resolves itself
I am absolved
so easily in tangents
so dramatically in execution
but painfully
devolved of awareness
undone almost too far
concern for that state
the solo undoing
until once again
I cry out in the darkness
needing to be someone else's vision
wanting not reflection
but anothers lens
it is but a sedative
and my brain and blood
the very air
is muddled by it
my wish to be shaped
preventing form
being moved
creating stagnation
everything exists
beneath entrapped screams
I can absorb yet be weightless
conditioning
be cast off
there is nothing
at the heart
of vastness
let me be the space
in-between ripped seams
a free flowing breath
that returns to a lung
to expand, contract
travels outwards
never retreats
I am once again ~
when I admit
unburdened awakening
lessons not from man
but from the wilderness
empty and erase me
inevitable persistence
my only container
all this
in the time
that I am allowed
the unenacted mental dialogue
of just surveying the scene
we can
trace
the
lines
of where nowhere goes
uninterrupted
but for the private tangents
in my head -
I may share the cheap wine
ask to be guided
in how to use the tools
or just inhale what I see
taking the raised temperature of the room
away with me to ponder
I'm so glad I paid you for your time
as I didn't want to get my hands dirty
but I do like witnessing
the tricks of the trade.
Inspired by The Floor Planers painted by Gustave Caillebotte
I decide not to worry about the parallelness
Of the tangents to the circles of our life story
The equation of the curve of my initial decision
Of you being my number tan45 was differentiated
As the union of your sets and conditions of your answers
Of your reply did not intersect with the tangent of the circle of my love
I integrated my mind and heart
So as to eliminate your love
But eliminating substituted the simultaneous equation involving you and I
Using completing two squares in solving the quadratic equation
Involving you was impossible
The almighty formula came into sight
When you factorized the algebra of you mind and heart
Making the line of your evergreen heart
Intersect perpendicularly at the center
Of the diameter of my life journey
You have rotated my life 180degrees clockwise
1.
Whenever the truest edge doesn’t hold,
Another existence it does belie.
When causality is a broken line,
Unseen variable has cracked the mold.
Simple cause and effect gets in trouble
Abstruse patterns underlie life’s events.
Straight Euclidean angles and tangents
Reveal deep truth when they twist and bubble.
Infinite weaving of the light and dark,
That from which all matter derives its form,
That from which all shades and colors are born,
Folding, animated by unseen spark:
Zero Point made of unbound potential.
Infinity in nothing, essential.
2.
A cause contains more than it alleges.
If all you can see are random events,
Assume that it must be coincidence
Occam’s razor it seems has two edges
The surface, outer manifestation
The solid, visible three dimensions
Concentrate, more enters your attention:
Substance beyond the realm of sensation.
Bursting through material pretension,
What unimaginable things are hid
Beyond the visible Cartesian grid
To unfold from another dimension?
The depth remains unseen, passes us by
Except in dreams, when the mind’s eye can fly.
3/23/16
Hybrid Italian/Shakespearean Sonnets
Abba cddc effe gg (x2)
I explore the tangents of my mind,
to expand the horizon of my kind,
my kin, my friends in sin sublime,
who drink the same wine of wisdom of word,
of noun, subject, adjective, verb,
pronoun, in these we are never perturbed,
preposition, conjunction, we know their function,
and thrive to master the craft through expression,
blessed-curse, we dig deep into our phrase purse,
and scream through time our declaration of passion.
To be sung to the tune of Both Sides Now by Judy Collins
Rows and rows of subtrahends
Repeating decimals without end
Regression lines to mark a trend
I've looked at numbers that way
But now they only add up wrong
Even though I stayed up all night long
Like missing words in someone's song
Words that seem to say
chorus
I've looked at numbers from both sides now
From left and right and still somehow
It's numbers' illusions I recall
I really don't know numbers at all
Secants, tangents, arc-cosines
It seems like just a game sometimes
What's my number, what's my line?
I've looked at trig that way.
Now all my graphs have gone awry
I've lost the will to find out why
Perhaps they'll make more sense by 'n' by
But who am I to say?
chorus
I've looked at trig from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's trig's illusions I recall
I really don't know trig at all
Edited 5/9/2016
Written 7/14/1986
Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may hereafter live with minor pain
and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His Love too unconditional
while Diomed (or Tydides)
wreaks havoc on the Trojans and Hector
gives it back (in kind)
anatomically correct descriptions
of spears piercing jawbones (and groins)
sons without fathers hunting and fishing thereafter
alone. Written
amazingly presciently!
as a metaphor for Vietnam (our war)
forgotten consensually
as this generation slips lazily away
to Hades (or kayaks to the huckleberries)
where the lights are always blue, gentian actually,
supper's served at 4 and former adversaries
pass the heavy hanging time playing pinochle (and pool).
We're selling the house to pay the taxes.
Pallas Athena wars among the men
from the axle of her chariot
and Venus is injured by Diomed,
standing in the field of battle where she never should have been,
in her adorable hand.
What has this to do with Solomon in jail.
Not the Jewish king, a black American male,
same thing.
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war.
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it.
anyone lived in a pretty how town.
We have no obligation
to perform the Iliad or read poems and even Homer
considers Achilles effete (compared to Hector)
and Odysseus is wrong even when he's right.
Therefore, modern man explores
the mathematics of circles in coordinate planes and their tangents
when (sooner or later)
the secret of warp speed is discovered
expansion of the species will be limitless and permanent.
On Devil’s Night
There once was a devil queen on Whispering Lane
Mean and cunning her crew driven insane
For millenniums hurling malice
Content in her palace
Casting a malevolent muse throughout her reign
The King no longer amused by sonnets that shame
Concoction’s of besmirchment tangents that defame
He sends for his men
Calls out to them
bring me an enchanted quill before the sunrise flame
On Devil’s Night…
Along trails a fairy ascends with cascading red hair
Whilst devil queen sleeps inside her musky lair
Dreams of incantations
linking locution associations
Hater of poetry that allures not hers drives despair
As the fairy sings with an angel's voice
The King listens he has made his choice
Let it be so my loyal Jester
the fairy you‘ll sequester
The zealous Jester lures to come rejoice!
The jealous devil queen a tedious word crafter
Responsible for cancelling laughter
Now casts her spell
expelling the fairy to hell
It’s there she sings her happily ever afters
You see she was in a realm from hell, and not even a spell could save her.
The new reign of elect it is when she’s saved, and the devil queen will finally reflect. Denouncing her kingdom and foreboding.
Keep Fairys free! To express their poetic revery
feel so heavy,
Weighed down by an anchor
No one can physically see.
I'm expected to be okay
To live a normal life
While dealing with a
chemical imbalance,
An emotional disturbance
Whose presenting symptoms are
Self destructive binges
And manic tangents
That have labeled me reckless
And often left me stranded.
I dive head first into
Waves crashing
Tearing it's way through
The walls I've built.
My fortress is unstable
There are weak spots
And some stains have
Remained.
These walls sometimes feel
Like they are 40 miles tall
And forged of steel
In that very moment
I feel so alone...
When surrounded by people
When introduced to anyone or anything new,
When one those new additions
causes changes to the flow
Of things
Who Dares to get too close or
challenge the authenticity
Of my disorders
By questioning my mental state.
Surely,
There's truth to the trauma,
Or it wouldn't continuously bother me
Causing catastrophic events,
Filling my head with memories
that never seem to end.
My mind short
I have fun with the world of geometry
The square, the rectangle and the parallelogram
Oh' the trapezoid and the rhombus
The triangles, the isosceles and the equilateral
All are a great tight family together
The circles and ellipses are closely related
The formulas of geometry try to memorize
The areas and circumferences
The diagonals and angles
For the trigonometric functions
You discover a new world
The sines and cosines
The tangents and arc tangents
If all this is not enough to entice you
Most probably now you fell in love with geometry
Luminescent shadows follow me around, but vanish as I ask who’s there?
Scary monsters and super creeps wait on every corner; a voice whispers beware
I start running I’m trying to gather pace; I’m running faster and faster but I hardly move
The faster I run the slower the cadence becomes; asks the whisper what do you have to prove?
Am I running from monsters past or ghosts hiding in the future?
I turn my head frantically to listen; the whisper is faint in the viscous ether
My pillow absorbs my drenching sweat, my legs kick and run, no stable ground
Frightened heartbeats, timid murmurs beg for reprieve, no more whisper, I can’t hear the gentle sound
Images changing proportions, gravitation bending scary faces
Electromagnetic transformations, shadows form a gigantic ghost
No awakening, remain in your abyss, where is the whisper I need most
My consciousness is chained by subconscious spectres; confront the phantom, the chains do not break
Oh gentle whisper cut me loose, help me to these images forsake
Collisions, particles bombarding subliminal pores, expose my soul to ricochets of guilt, conflict, pain
Prescribed orbits, predetermined order or tangents of love and desire
What to do, whisper to me, I am become insane
I spiral down into depths unknown to conscious science
More scary monsters, more super creeps, more shadows changing hue
Awake from this abysmal torture, send a whisper, bring me back to you
Sticky ghouls and distant memories collide with alpha particles and gamma rays
Chromatic aberrations confuse my vision and distort awaiting silhouettes
I too collide, I too am distorted as I enter the chasm where the mind forgets
Subatomic beings coagulate as memories; juries of demons saturate gaseous mixtures
Bubbles and froth and osmotic spirits, hallucinations from black and white pictures
Parallel curves and helical lines bend and warp my mind, I cry I scream I want I need, break free!
No space no time no light no sound no love; guilty condemnation, empty reality
The central singularity beckons, no return from unconscious waste
Anonymous fields bind me, commanding struggle to abate
Dimensionless objects, cold physics, primordial fear; Nightmare, no reprieve, take me to my fate.