Quantifying Poetry
Poetry is idoneous – the perfect fit!
We feel the beating heart of an emotion,
absorb or express that feeling
in a nuanced format of language
that can offer a profound satisfaction.
You watch, you listen, you learn
filtering creative thoughts into a structure
that is conceived in a framework on the page.
Gradually there is removal of scaffolding
and a brevity, clarity in word distillation;
the losing of the loose change.
You continually reach for best words, best order
until you have poetic form that offers
an edifice that is poignant, elegant or humorous
while dancing to the rhythm of the words.
A sense you have drawn up an emotion
from the expansive well of language
that is encapsulated in a poem
and, hopefully, one that is truly felt.
It doesn’t take a week to read a poem
but it can take a week, or a lifetime,
to appreciate and savour it.
Poetry allows us to speak;
occasionally it empowers us to fly.
A secondhand corner
Bookstore – I wonder what book will
Choose to make itself known to me today.
Dust or dialogue,
Extraction or echo,
Full-page or fiction? As I enter the
Gateway of the fixation of words – I wonder…
How many homes, people, miles you have been
Introduced to,
Jaunted, or come across? How your
Kindred-ness has inspired so many –
Living through pages, with your tree spirit still alive.
Mediator through human madness,
Navigation through understanding,
Openness through touch. With every
Page turned, how it nourishes a single soul –
Quantifying. Though each
Reader finds different meaning with a new word –
Side note. Though my trip
To the bookstore is coming an end – You are truly the spitting image of what
Universal unification exudes – of what humans allow, that is.
Verso, ending where another can begin again. To find new meaning
Worldwide to create their own place.
Xeric plant from the seed planted – Foundation. As I walk outside,
Yellow birds flying together, and how
Zen harmonizes the day.
If eyes open too soon
then a few mornings go missing,
but they are catching up
they will fly in backwards
tumbling out of windswept decades.
Eyes that open too late have to wait,
have to stare at a future blankness
while ears gatecrash the present.
Will the thrown newspaper
land on the lower or upper step?
It matters,
a quantifying arithmetic is essential
to determine next steps.
The percolator has mixed together
a thousand morning.
Dawn gathers enough gravity
to sink easily into an evening sunset.
We find ourselves on the verge
of all previous verges,
swinging one delving leg
to touch a floor
that rises up to meet us.
and its normal - too normal.
"I smell A.I. as it coldly brushes against me, stiff and analytical in it's digital analysis of my heartbeat, falling short in quantifying that which is experienced within my soul,,,,, this while though presenting the perfect picture of representation, lack's the true seasonings and flavor of life."
Darrell
A.I. attempts to understand the human experience,,,,, breaking it down into digital bits.... "ones and zeros" as we engineers call it. The outward picture comes quite close to an accurate representation of the heartbeat of humanity yet lacks any flavor ,,, any smell,,, any true understanding of my heart and soul .....
I live! I taste! I smell the flavors of life and I pity the paltry machines and their operators who will never know my joys, my heartache, my laughter, my pain, my victory, my loss, my love or my sorrow...
For the gods themselves stand in envy of my mortality !
Based on observable
And well-documented evidence,
War is nothing but the deliberate
And systematic erasure of human life,
With the purpose of achieving
Some political goal.
In quantifying the variables
That factor into the equation,
There is not, so much,
A calculus of war,
As there is a basic arithmetic,
And it is computed
With the rubber end of a pencil.
In a war of attrition,
God is on the side
Of the big erasers.
The lack of humanity
drives zero-sum
Away from each other
a darkening sun
What science explains
its methods conceal
Frustration attacks
lost cogs on the wheel
Desperation in charge
its point ever sharp
To pierce into nothing
but leaving its mark
That human about us
left bare unatoned
Quantifying our passion
—stripped clean to the bone
(St. David’s Pennsylvania: January, 2021)
The touchstones of existence…
how many have you known
A common rock, a baby’s kiss,
a dog to walk you home
Can one then trump the other,
with importance or with worth
Can a seaside villa or Renoir painting,
outshine a child’s birth
The physicists solution, quantifying
parts and sums
Can all the gold inside Fort Knox,
rebuy what Mozart’s done
What seems to me important,
is to touch as many as you can
And let the truth reveal itself
—your soul to then befriend
(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)
Quantifying Art…
quality by the pound
Feelings like hair, part
—separation profound
(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2015)
Quantifying Art,
quality by the pound
Feelings like hair part
—separation profound
(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2015)
We linked into the truth
Saw what was there
Heard the voices rage
As their secrets were laid bare
We broke into the code
Saw what's new and old
Always been the same
Until we meet again
The units quantifying life
Show history is built upon lies
Show people that were there are here
Do we never really disappear?
I never meant to be a Professor,
to keep records,
to rank,
to judge,
to preen.
A crow among peacocks,
I record your scores,
pretending they measure your skills.
I rank you among your peers,
Dutifuly quantifying your humanity.
I judge you by assigning a mark
That emerges from the ethers.
And yes, I peacock.
Peacock is a verb, a transitive one.
Creusa, the object of Medea's scorn,
peacocked her proto consumer lust
just before she succumbed to the higher order
of fire and air and blood and bile.
I never planned to display my gaudy feathers before a captive audience.
Pursuing Medea, Jason's royal trinkets led me astray.
I have delved into the very heart
where darkness simmers, love light glimmers
then explodes in current apocalypse,
an inferno eclipse of blind pyromania.
Words, mere kindling and kerosene,
fuse wire and gasoline, erupting, igniting
screaming aflame, roaring and screaming
your name, your name.
Spluttering and guttering to portray
something of an aspect, essential
mannerism to depict your genius,
beauty.
And fail, syntax and rhetoric charnel,
useless ashes as soon as they are born,
expiring with whimpers, torn away by
a hurricane of inadequacy.
Gone, such as if they had never been,
never written, muttered, spoken, uttered
or howled.
Avenues exhausted, no other modes
of expression, dysphasia in overload,
trashed in describing the indescribable,
quantifying the unquantifiable,
expressing the inexpressible.
Language pillaged, raped and bereft
of meaning until all pens and tongues
have left is the universal power of three:
"I...love...you..."
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.