bitterly i remember
in my first simplification class
i forgot BODMAS.

boys around me
solved gleefully
while my pencil
showed no will
to budge with the clock
bent on making me a laughing stock
before my peers.

it's such times in life
when devils raid
to come to your aid.

i gave a furtive look
to the notebook
of the boy next to me
put an equal to sign
and to the sum's next line
wrote nine.

what followed i would keep to mine.

Simplifying

I think the isolating medium -
(Pandemic’s global impact)
Has done the job for me;
Few demeaning ultimatums;
Calls returned, lunches met,
Malls paraded through
With nought of worth to do.

Oh, the benefits of saying in!
Throwing sins of wasteful time
Into the garbage bin of slime and time.
Everything brings inspiration.
Anything a motivation,
Open to inventiveness of one's creation
Which, in turn means making choices
Truer to an inner voice;
Not fiddling, waiting for some muse
To lift you from your busy-ness.

There is a principle I hold to:
Everything you wish to do
Will always be simplicity
But never easy.
That, my friend
Is, you could say, the end.


Simplifying 5.22.2021Circling Round Everything II; The Processes: Creative,Thinking,Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is art of simplifying love.

If you have no friend,
You don't have to go to the club,
And get drunk with strangers.
Let's get drunk together.

If you have no time,
You don't have to talk to me for hours,
Just simply text me,
And tell you're okay.

If you have no money,
You don't have to buy me fancy food,
We can eat the instant noodle instead.
Or I can cook and eat by myself.

If you're bad at remembering,
You don't have to remember our anniversary date, nor my birthday.
Just remember me,
Or simply remember my name.

If you're not in love with me,
You can start learning it,
Or simply throw me away.
It's way more simple than faking love.

that daft, the overworded: implictiness of
                                                                         fakery,
                         what is implictness by relativism,
                     has no explicit
"conversation" / dialectics,
  expressed indirectly via
a dependency of variables...
      as some might say:
we have rules, we have social norms...
the form, ex-,
  either odd or even,
         with regards to reiterating
numbers into words...
              explicit:
             expressed direcrtly via
an independent set of invariations...
        considering that in psychiatric terms
a depression, cannot be gesticulated
as such, "fathomable",
      easily understood / categorised
when an existential focus takes hold
of the "problem"...
             almost all psychiatric diagnostic
terms are shut off from
performing a medical practice,
when stated by: existentialist constraints...
              past the french schools,
and into the feral land of the germans...
the english?
   with their heritage?
              easily at loss with regards to
giving explanations, adequate to
satiate the "sufferer" with a excuse,
or rather, a...
                             a justification.
                my fault at reading more kant
than hegel and not fathoming
any economic model-answer...
                                    just give me a blank
workable canvas,
   and i will give you a vocab that will
probably muddle a few grey-beards
of the sufi community of kabul...
             because i ******* have to mind
this virus, like i might mind
ensuring the bulgarian prostitutes
check themselves to a methodological
clarification of donning the rubber...
well, if there's an explicit ergo libra,
and if there's an implicit ergo libra,
to balance cogito never actually meeting
the sum balance of either argumentation...
       what a funny scenario!
               ergo appears in two forms:
   parallel, similis, consimilis (=),
                       or via-parallel, anti-similis,
                        contra-similis (≠)...
           because thinking rarely
manifests itself in being, but rather:
in beings...
                       the common thread?
deficiency!
                     most of the time
the factum: cogito = sum,
          is actually a fact of:
                          cogito ≠ sum...
which is why the cartesian libra of ergo
is so, confusing with regard to how
the two aspect of consciousness
as governed to "allow" a balance...
  in that they don't...
                    the fact of thought
as thought being the ideal,
never, or rarely, translates into an
ideal existence...
         of simply not-thinking
    but rather over-simplifying life
by a per se,
              of a lack of sensual distrust...
the (1,0), (0,1), (0,0), (1,1) binary
over-simplification
of the cartesian ergo that mediates
cogito and sum...
                  you can't allow yourself
three immediacies of the same fact
in the tri-medium of
variant substance expressions!
              the fact of existence
cannot be grapsed by a fact of thought,
in the same way that a "fact" of either
an explicit, or an implicit application
of the interchangeable of stated fact
can somehow find a balancing libra
                 artefact of a mythological
stature to simplify the argument!
                       i simply find the cartesian ergo
too simplifying,
                   the problem of cogito never attaining
the potential of a sum,
as well at the problem of the sum never
attaining the potential of a cogito!
                given that
in the simplest mathematical grammar
the ergo is either expressed as:
cogito = sum,
             or cogito ≠ sum...
                  is that ego + cogito = ego - sum?
        or is that ego x cogito ≠ ego ÷ sum?
             what's that's 4 to the power of 8
in terms of variations?
              put me against the mathematical
punctuation marks, past the colons,
semis and commas and write it out
in math...
                       to have added to thinking
is to have taken away from being...
  to have multiplied thinking, is to have
divided your being...
                ergo = (= / is), but also (≠ / isn't) -
to have divided your thinking,
  isn't to have multiplied your being...
              to have added to your being,
is to have subtracted from your thought...
         show me the rubric of
the existent variations!
         show me!
                             philosophy per se,
is something that the koran can never teach me,
and never will,
even if in the slightest it only attempted
to teach me how to sing...
                   i have my own labyrinth
to mind,      
   let alone the common citizen of Istambul.

You spoke to me with your
voice like Mia Farrow’s and
your eyes not at all like
trampolines. A tar twig
bobbed between your lips;
you spoke of self-destruction
and smoked your commas
and semi-colons. You asked me
questions with the least amount
of answers and the most amount
of space, like a widow’s home
adorned in compromise. The six
o’clock sun sprawled through.
You said I reminded you of how
we’re always treating people like
fractions, simplifying where we
should be unfurling equations.
I saw the dawn illuminate your
hiccups and your hesitations. I
took a kiss; I thought there’s
nothing more fleeting than
moments like this, but at least
you can’t run quickly with a
heart so full.

Sunrise nearing its death,
the end of today
complementing the beauty of a pen stroke,
harsh scratching alleviating indelible ideas
showing selves in hues painting our last moments
allowing me to trace timelines
in the contoured caresses
of this silent instrument played
to blend melody with beginnings,
each progression scaling further along
the passing hours left settling
to minutes from now,
purpose elaborated in contrasting
blues and oranges and purples
composing the elegance of utility,
colors not enough to excise the excesses
of depicting days in dimensions,
of simplifying it to degrees of time.
Laying alongside this current
to shape clouds
and animate constellations,
my faux-corpse stares again into
the memory held in galaxies
only glimpsed at twilight.
Sharp cuts of consonants
and vowels' smoothed corners
try to rid me of
stream of conscious thinking loosed,
the inner struggle hoping for reprieve
from that constant combative nature
of inward disagreement
and dialectic digression
deflecting the question of
what if we'd only spoke
instead of being lost
to foreign type-faces designed by
some soul never to see
the dying day my way.
If only we'd spoke,
I would have had the chance
to stumble on a goodbye.
Rather we are left
to flourishes of unfamiliar weapons
sitting askew on these pages,
the balance shifted due to
us degrading to another's personality,
and writing out those lines
we couldn't come to say.

You know that bowl that I carry around in my belly?
Too heavy for my frame, I've carried it precariously, trying not to spill.
I've used it to catch the steady drip that's been there since forever. I've used it to catch the rocks that I hurled up like a juggler (to find where I begin). You've taken it, and now you're swirling the contents, rinsing them with your own feelings, your own words (yourloveyourloveyourlove). All the garbage, the petty insecurities and fearsfearsfears, wash out and leave behind the heavier stones and metals that I've used to construct myself, contain myself.
The material of my foundation exposed, you continue to rhythmically, relentlessly reduce me to the shimmersilt at the bottom of the bowl.
Eroding.
Simplifying.
Until you're left with the specks of gold that you say define me.
The evidence of treasured trust that remains after I've allowed you to dump out my contents with gentle, sweeping motions.

I will ignore all concepts of adherence and maybe, just this once,
be blunt about my fear;

I’m a stuck oriole in a window.
I’m a pedestrian somewhere in VV Soliven underneath the pouring rain
with my parasol jammed, won’t spread out.
The petrichor from the ground rises and like dust,
I settle and cave in, like an unsuspecting dagger making its slow crawl
towards the back of the next face I see in this deadlock.

They say when you stick it to the man,
stick it good, and whatever beating or punishment may follow,
face it like a man.

but what is a man to do to the higher man
when he has his guts spread on the floor like an inkblot
from a shattered glass?
this working classman status isn’t for the weak,
and it sure isn’t for the brave either – what will become of the fools
sitting atop our heads when we have learned to outgrow them?

Sooner than it is later, I will go back to the pit like some soldier
cleaning his Lee-Enfield in the endless snow.
I will be faced by inbreds, imbeciles, rebels,
dilettantes, proletariats who have their necks leashed, their arms
puppeteered and their voices mellowed down by some defunct ventriloquism.
I will crank open the mailbox of my home and see that there
are notices: some from the bank, the loans, and the bills – all of them screaming
pecuniary, all of them bludgeoning soul.

If this is what a man has to deal with when he comes to
learn that life’s no downtown street promenade, then I’m willing
to slit the throat of the next child that’s giddy enough and filled with life
to search meaning through the bleared image in front of him.
I see high-stake rollers and proletariats, bigshots, and darling boys
roll down their car windows and flick the smoke out in the **** freeway

while I am here, watching myself slowly rot in the cubicle mirror next door
wary of my somber entrails. I think of a pub somewhere in Magallanes, and I dream
heavily when I am awake. The beaded body of the Hefeweizen is waiting for me
like a paramour, but I have to clock-punch my way out first before I can reach
some sort of truce: as long as I have myself sign these contracts, as far as my freedom is
concerned, what keeps the ball rolling for me might be something I would
despise as long as I breathe in this disgustingly thick air of deceit and consummation.
There is no life in here. All of us are dead.
Buying things we do not need, doing things we don’t want, fooling ourselves
in the complete process, marry wives and husbands and breed children
who will do the same in this cyclically deadening circus. My god is filled with
cotton and the streets scream ****** ****** against the spring.
There are enough violence in the thoroughfares to cast me back to my
home and coil, fraught with unrelenting demand.

There’s no other way to look at it rather than simplifying the equation.
Some do it for worth, that’s your tonic.
Some do it for fun, that’s your senseless beating.
Some do it because they have no other choice: they are not looking far enough.
As long as you have yourself beaten to slave-bone and driven mad with
downtime, then you have yourself laid down on a silver-platter catching
the swill of such riotous rigor: to be shaken out of sleep and shove
meat down your throat and thank the Gods for a wonderful day when all I see
outside are streets blackened to the teeth with distortion and the automobiles
like limbless children leaving no trace.

Some take the easiest way out, but I am not crazy enough to bring
myself to sanity. I have other caprices to go with.
This is enough a suicide than it is on the other side.
Whenever I look at my superior, I see nothing,
and whenever I gaze at the surrounding scenes I see people
sticking knives at each other when backs are turned.
I see people swallow everything that is given to them without
the slightest inch of askance: to complain is the inability to withstand
the current situation – but I am no fool to close my eyes.
I have still the guts to face everyday like some old friend, death, in my arms,
singing blues from the 1980s. When this is done,
I will go back to where it usually does not hurt: in the silence.

where no faces bid me hello – they do well in their own discomfiture,
and I do not wish to see them any longer.
where no automobiles tear the streets and cleave the moon farewell.
where there are no sparrows outside, where there are no laughing children,
where there are no hollow men and women greeting each other tenderly
and blighting each other safe in the resignation of some dull home.

if I am mad, then what does this make you? better? privileged?
I’ve had other people look deep into me like some deepwell without
water and they tell me, “there’s something about you, something about you.”
and when I turn my back to search for some sameness,
I figure there is nothing else to find but the same trapping fate in this
burning cylinder of a home.

Waking up and filling in shoes and dressing up for nothing,
earning money and throwing it all at our own expense,
buying thrills and wasting away as time lounges like a cat
at the foot of the Victorian. If there’s better enough a fall than this,
I will sign myself to have my bones broken, my ribs opened

to let go of my famished soul while all the others
keep themselves clean, putrefying themselves viscerally.

The mind
picked up an idea
from reading
to just relax
and vibrate with it
so the mind
since it likes to add
thought just relax
and harmonize with it
and then
just relax
and resonate with it
and I am in favor
of all these techniques
but it strikes me
that this additive nature
of the mind
creates too much
so what I have been doing
is simplifying.
I just harmonize
with everything.